Hungary’s suppurating Jew-hatred and warped nostalgia for Nazi-allied wartime figures are consistent with the knowledge that this proud and ancient nation will be the first of Europe’s sovereign states to disappear for lack of population. Some Jewish charity should send interns to train in Budapest’s remaining kosher restaurants for purposes of cultural preservation. Otherwise, there’s not much to do but give them another chorus of the Hungarian Suicide Song and avert one’s gaze.

Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought of ever returning you

Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?
Gloomy Sunday
Gloomy is Sunday, with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there’ll be candles and prayers that are sad I know
Let them not weep let them know that I’m glad to go

Death is no dream for in death I’m caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I’ll be blessing you
Gloomy Sunday

Yes it sounds similar and thats why the Roma in Romania hate it when you call them Roma.They call themselfs proud Cigani(Gipsy).

Also Roma is just a caste in the Gipsy community.Its the highest cast-the second is Cigani and the third is Degesi that means Dog Eater and they are outsiders.No Cigani want contact with them.They don´t allow to let play their kids with kids of them.

But Cigani/Gipsy is the name for all because they are a lot more clans than Roma and Sinti.If you call them Roma its the same thing if you call all Germans Bavarians.

Non Gipsys are Idiots for them-they have an own name for it.They think if you help them than you are an idiot or you do it because you profit from it(Social Worker etc. …)

Last year I traveled through Spain. The Gypsys there are called Gitanos and are accepted as good musicians and in general part of the landscape. Everywhere I could see young Gypsy women with babies in their arms begging for money. Suddenly I had this idea to ask one of them if she understood Romanian. She opened her eyes wide, smiled and asked me for money in Romanian. I suspect the babies were heavily drugged because none of them was crying or moving. Every Gypsy woman could speak Romanian. In Granada I saw the ugliest 90 year old Gypsy woman sitting in a Volkswagen van and acting as a dispatcher. Collecting the money from the younger “workers” and giving them instructions. Could not figure out why Spain is allowing them in.

Spain can not do much, like other countries, because there are no controls between Romania and Spain and all the places in between. They are in the same Schengen Area. What it is possible to do is to expel people without jobs or means of self supporting after a few days. But this can be done only on individuals not against groups. And if you do so against more than three the leftists start crying “RACISSSSSM”.

About Laszlo Csatary: he lived in Canada until a few years ago. Ask Canada. The Magiar Government had other priorities after the fall of the Soviet Block: stuff like rebuilding a functional society with free market and likes. Not easy when you free yourself from the USSR and fall in the hands of EUSSR.

I think that talk about the “death of a hystoric culture” is a bit premature.
This process takes a very long time, sometimes centuries. The end result is more change than death. The Egyptians have become Arabs, the Zoroastrian Persians have become moslem iranians, etc. The conditions that led to the disappearance of Etruscs, Inca, Maya, Long Ears of the Easter Isles do not exist in Europe. When the Hungarian have arrived into the Panonian basin about a thousand years ago they started atacking in every direction just to let the neighbours know that there are some new tough kids on the block. This lasted for centuries. They might yet get their act together, find some intelligent leaders and a purpose in life. Before this happens, they have to look into the mirror, accept the fact that the empire is gone just as the Spaniards, the Brits and many others have.Shovinism, rasism, antisemitism do not help.

The concept of a homeland for an itinerant people seems oxymoronic. I am unaware of Roma nationalism as such, in the sense of a quest for a Roma homeland. Where are the Roma institutions of national revival — Roma linguists, historians, poets? And where are Roma civil engineers, airline pilots, physicians? I do not mean to deprecate the Roma, but I have never seen anything that looks like preparation or desire for a homeland.

There is a Tsigane PhD who does argue for the legitimacy of Tsigane culture. Several Communist governments granted them the status as an ethnic group and there are people who might (by ancestral heritage) be considered Tsigane pilots. There are about three different types of community as perceived from the outside.

1: Virtually completely assimilated with high intermarriage rates with outsiders. The Tsigane live in apartments or houses and have a crime rate and employment rate very similar to the larger community. They might try to retain the more photogenic aspects of Tsigane culture but they are mostly ignored.

2: Semi-nomadic groups sill exist at the periphery of cities through such means as living under bridges, roving around outskirts, and other ways of surviving outside the general society. They are sometimes have jobs but most of those involve collecting scrap metal or other low-skill work. They are probably the most hated by residents and office workers due to their habit of screaming loudly at random intervals. Their crime rate tends to be elevated but not to the degree expected by the local police forces.

3: Fully-nomadic groups sometimes (but rarely after a rush of emigrants emptied several villages) move around engaging in begging, theft, and any means to keep the community together without having to engage seriously with the outside world. Crime is expected of these groups and they are among the first to be blamed whenever a nasty incident occurs with outsiders.

The most assimilated Tsigane are often ashamed of their heritage and the almost inaudible lobbying of a handful of Tsigane poets and other intellectuals (yes, they exist) is more about no longer being ashamed than about trying to govern themselves.

Point taken. However, peoples and cultures change. If Hungarians leave, who takes over and runs the place? Itinerants need a stable base upon which to feed. Necessity being what it is, Roma must either leave, settle down and invent their own version of a nation (as done many times before) or wait hopefully for someone else.
Where is the tipping point forcing someone to fill the vacancy? Hungarians less than 50%? 30%?
I bet on survival.

I do not understand all this talk about “the Hungarians leaving” and the country being given to other groups. Nobody is leaving or going anywhere.
Countries are not given away. The last time this has happened it was God giving Eretz Israel to the Israelites. And it is not easy to take a country, or take it back. Remember the Falkland Islands. As soon as the Argentines decided to take back the Malvinas, the British navy showed up with imperial troops and kicked them out with extreme prejudice.
If the Hungarians will need more people they can always invite in their brothers from the areas lost at Trianon. I think West European countries are in greater danger of losing their national homeland to the moslem tide than the Hungarians. Islam is spreading without interuption in every direction since the 7th century.

Only in American conservative media can someone read of the death of Hungary and find a silver lining: finally the Roma can have a state! It’s an ill wind, etc.

The Roma are not romantic figures out of Victor Hugo. Believe me, you generally don’t want them moving in next door. For every assimilated, educated Roma — one thinks immediately of Cziffra, or the great Ion Voicu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dlf0igw8mA) — there are many who are nothing but trouble.

It’s been some time since I looked into the Europe-wide statistics, but I believe I found that out of Eastern Europeans declaring Roma ethnicity, only about 6% complete secondary school. And this isn’t attributable to prejudice; my wife’s grandmother, a small-town schoolteacher from rural Transylvania, used to go door to door in the Roma quarter every morning collecting children for school, and when she got too persistent, Roma families would lock the door or, eventually, move away.

Since virtually no Roma are, as Mr. Goldman says, in a position to run a country, a Roma homeland would quickly turn into an undeveloped, country-sized slum. If the Roma are ever to become a settled people, even though there’s no evidence that that’s what they presently want, it won’t happen easily or soon.

I agree with you that majority of Roma are very bad news for every community where or near which they live, from Bucharest to London. In Hungary they make 7% of population and 50% of prisoners. That a very telling statistics. When Hungarian communist government attempted to settle them by giving them free apartments, Roma were promptly selling those and returning to their usual life.
And yet they need their own country. Yes, it would be a basket case for sure but it is their problem, not of their neighbors. After 1000+ years in Europe they must learn at last to fend for themselves without help of Hungarian, Rumanian, Slovak etc. governments.

It’s not necessarily that Roma won’t become a majority in Hungary — just that, if they do, the standard of development in Hungary will decline to African levels, since very few Roma have the skills required to keep the lights on. There is no class among the Roma with the ability to maintain the related physical infrastructure, the required financial arrangements, modern farming and mining, etc. It would be like turning a country over to the kids from The Wire.

If Mr. Goldman is right, and in my view he’s definitely onto something, then what we should expect (by analogy with the post-Roman order) is a new wave of ethnogenesis in Europe as existing countries collapse into ungovernability. The existing Magyar race, for example, came into being in historical time, emerging as a settled nation under St. Stephen in the 11th century. (Genetic studies show that modern Hungarians are mainly Slavs by blood; in other words, the small minority of conquering Magyar nobles took Moravian brides and concubines, and the modern Magyar race is thereby Magyar by culture but mainly Slavs by descent). Similar stories could be told of the Romanians (Daco-Latin peasants, Slavic lords); the Bulgarians (the “Bulgars” were a Turkic-Sarmatian group who gave their name to a Slavic nation); the French (“[n]os ancêtres, les Gaulois…”); and of course the English. England is a graveyard of ancient nations, many of which, for example the monument-builders, left not even their names. But the same is true of the Balkans, central Europe, and Iberia, which have been populated, re-populated, depopulated, and migrated across many times, with only a few bowls, scratched rocks, and potsherds left to tell the tale.

The point is that all major European nations have a definite origin, population collapse may herald a definite end. Just as the Alans, Cumans, Gauls and Visogoths are no more — not exterminated, but dissolved into other nations — following the collapse of European populations, we can reasonably expect new nations to emerge. With illegal immigration into Europe running at high levels and the emergence of, e.g., a new Senegalese community in Italy, it’s clear that the future of Europe will include significant non-European elements. Since Slavs and Germans are collapsing almost as fast as Magyars, it’s hard to imagine them filling the gap in Hungary.

“The existing Magyar race, for example, came into being in historical time, emerging as a settled nation under St. Stephen in the 11th century.” The single most powerful Slavic city-state of that time was Novgorod the Great, of which Yuri Dolgoroky’s Muscovy was an adjunct. Nonetheless even David would have to admit Israel owe’s some of its brightest minds to the gene pool from the Pale of Settlement, and certainly its supermodels.

Yeah Rome was a melting pot-but the melting por has destroyed it because Rome have no more money.

The same happend in Britain-they payed the Anglo Saxons(Germans)to fight for them-but after the war the fought against the brits and forbid them to marry brit womans.So today the Englisch people are made of german mens and british women.THe language is very similar to german not to old british!

@goldman
Never heard that Bulgarians save so much jews but ALbanians in Albanian did(outside they where Alabians in the Muslim SS Division Handzar)they saved all the jews there i read.

For Hungary and Muslim SS Divisions:Even the german SS was shocked about their brutality.They reported it in their daily reports.

It is satisfying to see evolution weeding out the weak. What have the Hungarians ever contributed to the well-being of the human race? How many famous Hungarians have there been? Liszt, and a certain mathematician who worked in graph theory; that’s about it. But Hungary may yet have a bright future ahead of it as the second Jewish state.

I find Hungarian women, being at the crossroads of Central Europe, gorgeous. It is sad to see jingoist Magyarization arise again. Hungarians bid for independence in 1848 was fundamentally dealt a blow when the ethnic Hungarians insisted on the Magyarization of the non-Magyar population in the rest of what constituted the Kingdom of Hungary. As a result the Croats threw in their lot with the Hapsburgs.

If the Roma had a healthy urge for a homeland, they would no longer be a parasite class, and that would ruin the point (or lack of it) in their existence. It’s shameful that they’re replacing a high quality people like the Hungarians. Low fertility, but high quality populations have to take action to protect their right to exist. Hungary shows this strongly.

Miklos Horthy is mostly remembered today for fighting Communism and trying to regain lost territories. Writing him off as just another bigot misses the point. Today’s situation of crashing fertility largely vindicates him (if not some of his actions); Hungarians cannot live if they lack living space. The country simply has never proven itself viable in the long run with its tiny modern borders, just like Germany. Italy and Japan are much better examples of pessimism making a nation commit suicide. Hungary’s reactionary tendencies are in fact very tame in context of what is happening to them, and loudly pointing at them is just further tormenting the dying.

Miklos Horthy did not directly cause any “murder” to happen. Murder is reserved for a fanatical jihadi with inspirations both individual and spiritual, not for a secular duty of obedience or patriotism. The best word to use here is kill. Murder is when things are taken personally, which isn’t what motivated Horthy. He wanted more land, and he did kill for it.

This is the kind of thinking that leads to unspeakable outcomes. Where is the idea that all men are created “in the image and likeness of God” (as Mr Goldman might say), or at least are of similar inherent dignity? If we are not both starting from that axiom, we have nothing to say to each other.

In my country, Australia, there is certainly an underclass of Aboriginies for whom life is similar to that of the Roma, and this poses acute public policy challenges, as well as serious questions for the communities afflicted. Noel Pearson is an Aboriginal activist who has said a lot of sensible things regarding this matter, and is well worth looking up if you are seriously interested in the topic. By “activist”, of course, I’m using the broad definition of the term; he is no race baiter, and has things to say to the Right and the Left.

Quite right. Israel has a fertility rate of 3 (for both Jews and Arabs). It has 20,000 sq.km. vs. Hungary’s 90,000, and 7.7 million people vs Hungary’s 9.7 million. 60% of the Green Line territory, moreover, is desert. There is only one sense in which the diminution of Hungary’s territory could be said to affect fertility. Hungary had ambitions to be an important power, co-equal with Austria; its humiliation in two World Wars destroyed the illusion while the loss of its Jews destroyed its capacity to be an intellectual power. Sitting in the rump that is today’s Hungary, one well might ask: why be Magyar, and why bring more Magyars into the world? That is said, to be sure, but I see no reason to give Transylvania back just to improve Magyar self-esteem.

Sorry, you have bungled the history. While Horthy was certainly a German ally, he resisted German pressure to deport Hungary’s Jews to the camps, so much so that the Germans invaded the country and took over the government in 1944: it was their puppets, not the deposed Horthy, who presided over the deportations.

Even though Horthy failed ultimately to keep Hungarian Jews out of Auschwitz, he can still in a way be credited with the survival of those who did, since, arriving as late in the war as they did, the SS simply didn’t have time to kill them all, and thus they represented a significant portion of those who were liberated.

Even if his resistance to some Nazi pressure saved Jewish lives, Horthy’s still a war criminal for the conduct of his troops in the USSR. The Hungarians and Romanians were mostly rear echelon/auxiliaries (read: burning villages down and murdering peasants in reprisals for partisan activity) until massive German losses before Moscow forced them to the front lines. They didn’t fight that well and some Hungarians adruptly switched sides as soon as the Red Army got within the country’s expanded eastern borders with Ukraine.

The Latvian SS and Ukrainian SS volunteers largely performed the same roles.

There seems to be a pushing of the idea that Horthy was some sort of proto-fascist in the past year or so that has been emenating from the (mostly) left wing European press. It is sad to see conservatives taking up this theme now. This can be seen as an attempt to de-legitimize the FIDESZ government that was formed after the electoral destruction of the MSzP (Hungarian Socialist Party) in 2010, with FIDESZ and their allies picking up an unprecedented 2/3 majority in the parliament. While liberal commentators have focused on this as some sort of evidence that Hungary is becoming some sort of nationalistic, anti-Semitic haven, the truth is much more complicated than that. Is there anti-Semitism in Hungary? Absolutely yes, but I don’t think it is any more advanced than in most other European countries, which may be a backhanded compliment at best. The fact is that while MSzP was in power from 2002-2010, they continually lied about the state of the Hungarian economy and the financial position of the country, which has become absolutely dire. FIDESZ and PM Viktor Orban have definitely been ham-handed in their approach to the situation, using their parliamentary super-majority in dubious ways. The fact is that it is not ultra-nationalism or anti-Semitism that are the driving forces behind the pessimistic attitude in Hungary these days (although pessimism can be said to be a national characteristic of Hungarians), but the absolutely hopeless economic situation, as well as the fact that young people can see no hope for a better future.
By the way, for those who think that Hungarians have contributed little or nothing to Western Civilization, you would be surprised to find out just how many Hungarians have been responsible for things that impact your life in ways large and small. There have been 12 Nobel prize winners from Hungary, significantly 11 of the 12 have been in the fields of science and mathematics, with only 1 from literature. Joszef Biro invented the ballpoint pen, Joszef Pulizer (of Pulitzer prize fame)was a famous newpaper publisher, and Pete Gogolak was the first to introduce ‘soccer-style’ placekiking in the NFL. Not to mention Harry Houdini and Arthur Koestler. It is significant to mention that of all the Nobel prize winners and other Hungarians who have made the greatest impact on the wider world, most of them have done so from outside of Hungary. It is a sad fact that Hungary has yet to find a state-government system that can harness the potential of its human capital. I have taught at secondary schools and universities in the USA and Hungary (as well as Ireland) and would rate the educational product of Hungarian schools to be far superior to their American counterparts. Sadly, the greater part of the best students have to go to the US or UK, or even Germany, France and Italy to have a chance at what many Americans would consider to be a ‘decent life-style’.
This post is probably already too long to get into a de-bunking of the anti-Horthy propoganda that is being peddled here and elsewhere these days. Suffice to say that the truth is much more nuanced, when it is not absolutely oppossed to what is being written. Horthy as some sort of proto-fascist is something that has been held over from Soviet propoganda, which also tends to view people such as Winston Churchill in the same light. Horthy was, in fact, an authoritarian-ish leader of the aristocratic-conservative type. He tried to supress both the radical left and the radical right, and he jailed the leader of the Hungarian Arrow-Cross party, Ferenc Szilasi as well as Communists. During the 1930′s, Horthy was forced to make some accomodation with the radical right, as they became popular with the working class of Budapest, but his alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was not an ideological but a political one. The primary goal of all Hungarian political parties and the vast majority of its population was the repudiation of the Treay of Trianon (1920) which had stripped the historic Kingdom of Hungary of 2/3 of its national territory and almost half of its population. The unwillingness of the UK and France to pay any heed to Hungarian requests to re-visit the terms of that treay led it into the fold of the other ‘revisionist’ powers of Germany and Italy. If one refers to Horthy as an “ally of Hitler,” should we not be concerned that there is a statue on the National Mall in Washington, DC of that famous Stalinite ally, Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Of course not, this is obviously a guilt by association fallacy, but the linking of Horthy with Hitler because Hungary and Germany were allies is an equally fallacious connection.
As to Horthy’s association with the Holocaust, this is also another area which is much more nuanced than is often made out. Horthy himself held certain anti-Semitic views, but these were of the nature of an aristocratic anti-Semitism that was not uncommon throughout Europe (which is not by way of trying to excuse it), but at far removes from the exterminationist views espoused by Hitler and the Nazis. Although Hungary (along with most of the countries of East-Central Europe) had to walk a fine line, being stuck between two large powers (Germany and the USSR) led by two of the most ruthless sociopaths in human history, Horthy managed to resist Hitlers entreaties to deport Hungarian Jews to German death camps. The result was that by the time of the German coup d’etat in March, 1944, Hungary had the largest concentration of Jews left in Europe at the time. Horthy’s collaboration with any German atrocities after March, 1944 should be viewed along with the knowledge that the Germans held his only surviving son hostage (his other son had already been KIA on the Russian front).
In short, the rehabilitation of Horthy need not be a sign of something dark and dangerous, but merely the reclamation of a part of Hungarian history from the post-1945 narrative that was forced on them by the Soviets and their Hungarian stooges for 45 years. Which isn’t to say that Horthy is an unabivilant figure, but that these are definitely ambivilent times in Central Europe.

And 1940-45 was one moment where Human nature and consciousness was faced with a very unambiguous test. Peasants and Royalty alike made their choices: some, such as Queen Mary of Romania, became Righteous among the Nations; others – Horty among them – made choices that exclude them from this category.

Basically it shows clearly that the Horthy government was “good” only in comparison with the fascist arrow-cross government that took power after the German occupation of Hungary in 1944.
For example, the Horthy government created forced labor battalions for Jewish males in 1939. I know, because my father, aged 19 at the time, “served” in one from 1940 until the end of the war.

I would take issue with a couple of statements. I don’t think it is a rejection of fertility, but rejection of the compromises that modern affluence brings upon MEN (makes them less sexy and dominant) wrt women. You can see the same birthrates in Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Coastal China, and similar collapse in Tunisia, Algeria, and Iran, nations which are in many cases completely lacking in Christian/Judiasm heritages. Rather, I think the simplest explanation is (as opposed to blogger Steve Sailer’s term “Occam’s PC Butterknife”) that women raised to the same level as men, or higher, no longer find them sexy enough to have kids with — look at Japan where young women spend nearly as much on pets/cuteness toys as they would on actual children. Meanwhile look at Mexicans in the US, with much higher fertility (a function of teen birth rates) in the same environment but vastly different cultural space.

Logic says Hungarian women being made equal despise their men. And thus don’t want to have kids by them. This is the central paradox of modern wealth — male cooperation, dutifulness, responsibility, are all absolutely required to build a technological, wealthy society, and repel women like baseball stats and engineering programs, unless women are socially and significantly below most men in status. See the enthusiasm among women for “Mad Men,” and “Twilight,” and and almost anything with “bad” and dangerous Alpha males.

As for the anti-Semitism of the Hungarians, and the rise of Fidez, who can be surprised? The PC pablum and “diversity” (which amounts to eternal blood-guilt for all ordinary Whites particularly non-Alpha White males and exaltation of non-Whites) is about as attractive to most people outside the elites as a daily meal of cow manure. Elites forced it down their throat and so the people look for what the elite despise.

In my mind Conservative Restorationists should emulate the true hero of WWII. Winston Churchill. Give each other the V for Victory sign, quote his sayings, defend the traditional nation-state, history, culture, and cuisine. Emulate his manner of speaking, his dress, and give people something positive that the elites hate even more than WWII Fascists: the Traditional British Empire and Churchill.

As for the Senegalese, should they take over Italy, the place would look like a typical African slum. Africans are perhaps the greatest failures on the planet, proving singularly unable to do anything with technology as places like Malaysia and South Korea and Singapore and Japan starting off from equal or worse infrastructure and wealth positions forged light-years ahead. Of course, they were not Africans. I agree with Obama’s Grandfather that even if the “African cannot make his own bicycle” it is only right and proper they be ruled, even horribly, by their own than well by outsiders. But expecting anything from them is a fantasy like Twilight.

And this is the fantasy that Hungarians are understandably rebelling against, as Israelis rebel against the flood of Africans making life miserable in lower-class places in Tel Aviv and elsewhere (high welfare rates, crime, victimizing the White natives, etc.) Diversity and PC and Multiculturalism don’t work. It is merely reverse colonization and victimization of the natives who must support a hostile ethnicity intent on conquering while requiring massive welfare funds and being a general failure in pretty much everything that marks modern technological success.

European history is filled with Jewish scientists, Roma and Muslim and Africans are completely absent. Science and technology are not magic bloodline heritages like wizards in Harry Potter — anyone with the inclination can use it and improve it. Sony and Honda and Panasonic are proof of that. Hungarians, Germans, Italians, French, Spaniards, and Greeks are made second class citizens in their own country, supporting eternal hostile refugee ethnicities and get nothing for it, not even an Einstein. Merely Roma, Muslim, and African rappers and such. No wonder they are angry, and signing up for the only things global elites express hatred for every day. No one will sign up for PC and Multiculturalism. It is important for Conservatives to offer a competing, Churchillian alternative to ethno-fascist nationalism (not the least of which is that ethno-fascism is a proven failure and will only make things worse even in Francoist/Peron form).

Gameless fools need an injection of Southern DNA, without the phenotype baggage. Italians and Greeks aren’t lacking in this area; it’s more of an Anglosphere issue. Goldman is absolutely right that sheer pessimism can choke a country’s will to live, and it does so for much of Southern Europe. It isn’t the only explanation, though.

Hungary, Serbia, Austria, and Germany are countries that have lost too much land to be viable. Their populations have stagnated or collapsed ever since they were forced, or forced themselves, into tiny little neighborhoods. Central Europe is an industry in need of consolidation.

“Hungary, Serbia, Austria, and Germany are countries that have lost too much land to be viable. Their populations have stagnated or collapsed ever since they were forced, or forced themselves, into tiny little neighborhoods.”

This theory is nuts, if not worse. What do they need land area for? They have no problem feeding themselves. The price of land (and houses) is driven by policies not lack of space.

German birthrates started collapsing only after after 1967; it is similar in other European countries. German area grew (and population density fell) after reunification but birth rates kept collapsing. This is clearly a cultural phenomenon.

The idea that a woman in Frankfurt or Munich would have more children if Silesia was still German is idiotic. Nor have Polish birthrates benefited from having Silesia. Russian birthrates collapsed, too. Do they need more area? How do Spain and Italy and the Netherlands fir in your theory? Employ a little logic, please.

No one said that there can be no African scientists – but human experience says that there will not be very many. And a list of 18 names covering the whole continent, including doctors, engineers and an astronaut, does more to reinforce the impression than to refute it. Not to take away from the achievements of these individuals, but it does not change the fact that you will find more scientific brainpower in, say, Taipeh than in all of Africa.

What makes you think most women will find a domineering little putz who needs to prove himself superior to them because he suffers from an inferiority complex sexy in the least? Domineering men are no fun at all. They turn me colder than the North Pole. And the idea that becoming equal makes women despise men is plain silly.

If your theory that equal women simply don’t find men sexy anymore, or at least not “ordinary”, responsible, decent men, was true then we should have seen a significant drop in heterosexual sexual activity. I didn’t conduct any reasearch on the matter, but I would hazard a guess that sexual activity actually rose rather than drop since the 50s because unmarried sex became legit. If anything, it’s not men that became less attractive to women, but the idea of having children. Today women want a career, or at least a good job, which also requires college education, and children get in the way. It’s one thing to have one or two, and another thing altogether to have 3, 4 or 5. Today there are also contraceptions, so you can more or less make sure you won’t get pregnant even if you have sex regularly. I think men, and perhaps also women, are less inclined to commit early because they can get sex without getting married. People marry older than before, and if a woman wants to graduate from college and have a career she won’t start having children in her early twenties, which means she most likely won’t have many kids. Another factor is that people today have higher standards and expectations financially, and they also invest more in their kids and for a longer period. Parents today want to send their kids to college so they could get a good job. All that requires two working parents to take care of less children than before. The more technological a society is, the more education is required to succeed in it, and education costs in money, time and effort, both for the parents and their children, so it makes sense that in more technological societies birth rate will be lower. Also a longer education period means a longer “adolescence” phase, so people don’t become adults in their early twenties.

These may not be the only factors – for instance, religion is certainly a factor, and war may have a positive impact on birth rate too – but all these factors sure make a lot more sense to me than the idea that women despise men or don’t find them sexi since we’re equals. What proof do you have for that? I just don’t see it in any woman I know or ever knew.

And BTW, you’re wrong about Twilight too. I’ve only watched the first movie, but as far as I can remember the hero was not an alpha male. He was a mysterious tortured soul in a boyish metrosexual body. He abstained from blood because it’s bad to murder, was very sensitive and brooding, attentive, willing to sacrifice his own selfish passions for his beloved, and finally willing to make an extremely long-term commitment (considering the life span of vampires). The only alpha male quality he had was, of course, that he was always there to save the damsel in distress. It’s a romantic fantasy. Romantic fantasies of the past have been about princes and knights. Prince Arthur is indeed an alpha male, and he may be closer to the ordinary guy than a tortured sensitive vampire, but he’s not exactly the boy next door either. Neither is Superman or John Wayne. Still women married the boy next door, just like men marry the girl next door despite the fact she’s usually nothing like their favorite porn star who occupies their fantasies.

For many years, my late mother employed a ethnic Hungarian housekeeper and cook who had fled in 1956. Her English name was Julia and she too has sadly passed.

She made wonderful things for us, especially the pastries. Every birthday was accompanied by a request for her hazelnut cake with strawberry whipped cream icing. And she made us wonderful flourless treats for Pesach.

She never made Stuffed Carp for us. Probably because my mother claimed the koved of making gefilte fish. I would choke down gefilte fish to please my mother, but since she passed, I no longer serve the stuff.

This brings me to the larger question of the continued relevance of the terms Ashkenazi and Sephardi. And whether they have meaning for us. My own feeling is that Ashkenaz and Sephard are gone and we should mourn them, but we are now just Jews.

The culinary relevance of this is that for the most part Ashkenazic food is vile — greasy, salty, and flavorless. Sephardic cuisine is far superior in flavor and health. There are plenty of terrific cookbooks by authors like Claudia Rodin, Joan Nathan, and Gil Marks that dig into both traditions to allow us to create modern Jewish food that is healthy and flavorful.

For more evidence of cross traditional cuisine check this Wall Street Journal Article about the Moroccan Jews who have taken over Manischewitz.

Everyone tends to forget about the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians and Romanians who joined in the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It was hammering the Romanian and Italian lines with one of the world’s largest artillery barrages that opened up the encirclement of Paulus 6th Army at Stalingrad.

Nonetheless David, in these times color me skeptical whenever any European Union member state is suddenly described as fascist (you’ll notice outside of Russian media Latvia which still has SS veteran parades gets a pass from the Washington Post/Economist crowd, as I asked one American with a Latvian spouse “it wasn’t THAT SS”. The hell it wasn’t). A lot of Greek cops voted for the extremist parties simply out of frustration with being asked to beat back their countrymen every day on behalf of a hated government.

Thank you. Mittel Europa’s cuisine is a tender subject in our house. Julia was not our only connection.

My wife’s family came from Vienna. Her Aunt, who paid for her education, owned a restaurant in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary). We have the guest book, nobility, politicians (Jimmy Walker of NYC), and artists ate there. We have pictures as well.

That world is gone. We can only cook some of its dishes and imagine what it was like.

Gefilte fish made of Carp is the poor version. The well-off one was made of Pike, a much finer white fish.
Aside from my Great-Grandma’s winning recipe, the best Gefilte fish I had was a Russian/Moldavian one, “adjusted” by the Moroccan who inherited the recipe and made it.

Both carp and pike are flavorless. I’ve caught pike and cooked them myself, and it’s a challenge. La Grenouille in New York offers pike quenelles as its signature dish — something of a hat trick, impressive in execution but not really that interesting. I don’t go there any more. The best river fish of that sort I’ve ever had was in Budapest, and it was stuffed carp. If I have to eat river fish, to be sure, it would be Rauecherforelle mit Meerrettichsahne, preferably with a Trocken Riesling (I confess to eating smoked fish in non-kosher venues).

I was born in Moldavia. Lived there for quite a few years. Classic Gefilte Fish is a carp. Pointless to try to make it if you have no heart, soul and traditions.Anyone who tells you otherwise are just blowing hot air. Made the right way, in tradition, is to die for.

When you described the gelled carp, I cried. My mother, now of blessed memory, used to prepare this for my dad. She was a native of Debrecen and Budapest and along with her family somehow survived Mauthausen/Gunskirchen and 2 death marches before coming to America to become – of all things – a NYC high school English teacher.

She also would praise the Jewish “Hunkies” as the world intellectual elite, and how right she was. I have some of her recipes but sadly not the carp.

Thank you for the lovely memory, despite the tragic balance of your essay. Köszönöm szépen and zei gezunt.

Yes, yes, yes! One of the great joys of Christmas is roasting a goose; the other is baking the potatoes in the fat from it. There is always more left over to use in the months to follow. It’s about $10 for a little tim of the stuff if I was desperate enough to buy it…

Duck fat is pretty good, too. In fact, when I kill a duck, I get the meat, the fat and the bones for stock, which is also very good.

Waterfowl are so much more satisfying than chooks, as much as I love them.

Yes, the Sephardic food is far more subtle and nuanced. So too is the Sephardic culture in some ways, but as everyone is now intermarrying between the strains in Israel, it should be an interesting outcome.

Describing Paul Erdos as “a certain mathematician who worked in graph theory” hardly does justice to the accomplishments of the man who (IIRC) holds the record for the most research publications (many in collaboration) in the history of mathematics. Back in the days when Erdos, Teller, Von Neumann, Szilard, etc. were all active, there was a sort of joke to the effect that “superior extraterrestrials are already here, disguised as Hungarians.” It is indeed tragic that these men have no successors. Stan S. is a fool.

Without meaning to defend the loathsome Stan S., he was likely thinking of the younger Bolyai, not Erdős, since Erdős was a Hungarian Jew. The Hungarian brain trust of the middle 20th century was overwhelmingly Jewish. (If so, he was wrong, since Bolyai’s most famous work was in non-Euclidian geometry. If he was thinking of Dénes Kőnig, well, surprise, he was a Jew as well.

I’m not particularly happy that this is the case, but facts are facts: most of the most highly-accomplished Eastern Europeans were Jews. It’s my impression that, for example, the majority of Nobelists from Easter Europe were Jews, and indeed in some countries, Jews were the only Nobelists. Bulgaria comes immediately to mind (sole Nobel to Elias Canetti); Belarus has 3.5/4 Jewish Nobelists (Alferov, Physics 2000, was half-Belarussian); Romania has 2/3 (and Palade, the only ethnic Romanian of the three, did most of his work in the USA.)

That is unfortunate. It seems that the Stormfront types are often deliberately planted/infiltrated into any websites that seek to revive a Europe of sovereign nations rather than the Europitsky Soyuz (sounds very much like Sovietski Soyuz in Russian, doesn’t it?). Certainly the Eurocrats with their Tower of Babel and ruthless financial repression of Southern Europe after hooking their corrupt elites to the German/British banks are no friends of Israel or the Jewish people. Note that the non-fascist Greek nationalists want an alliance with Russia and Israel and see no mutual exclusivity between the two at all. As predicted in The Clash of Civilizations back in the 1990s, Sam Huntington’s pan-Orthodoxy is starting to raise its head above the parapet…

Most of the best real estate around Budapest, as with Karlovy Vary and Prague in the Czech Republic, is going to end up being owned by Russian biznismen. I think there’s a large memorial to Red Army soldiers there near a beautiful Russian Orthdox Church:

Ignaz Semmelweis and Rudolf Kálmán are two Hungarian scientists who changed the world, and afaik they are (Kalman is still alive) not Jewish.
OF the Jewish Hungarians, my personal favorite is Szilard, because of his exceptional talent at foot voting, as well as for patenting a refrigerator with a more famous Jew.
(Needless to say, it’s not for these achievements that he is most famous, but these are the reasons why I like him.)
But perhaps the most impressive mind was John von Neumann.

Glad to hear from you Calinescu, and glad to hear that you have a job. Last time you checked in, you were relating to us the desperate employment situation for lawyers.

I just came from a trip to Ireland, and was struck by how empty the Irish countryside is in Western and Southern Ireland. This is due mainly to the famine of the 1840′s and the subsequent mass emigrations of almost all young Irishmen. Even in today’s prosperous Ireland, people have not gone back to settle that area, preferring the growing cities of the country.

This example points out another likely outcome in Europe from such low birth rates. The gypsies don’t tend to settle in places where there aren’t productive people. How would they make their living? The same can be said of the Arabs in the Middle East. They migrate to where the jobs are, created by people more industrious than themselves, thus leaving large tracts of land potentially as zones of depopulation. That result also occurs due to warfare which drives away able-bodied people, looking to preserve their lives. Large parts of Europe in the future may simply be empty, rather than a mixture of European and third world populations. Large chunks of Syria may soon be empty too, and this is in a country that has a rather high birth rate.

One must note that thanks to modern agriculture there really is less need for the previous levels of farmers. Given what the terrain and climatic conditions are, perhaps Ireland is already producing the most it can under the present economic circumstances. Perhaps it is simply the empty countryside that was once filled with farmers no longer needs that many farmers.

I predict more Chinese and Indian legal/high value added immigration to EUrope, including Ireland. It’s already started in Moscow. If you go to MGU’s Russian language classes more than half the students are either mainland Chinese or Taiwanese.

Ellen,
That’s a good point. Without someone else to provide jobs, the Arabs (and the Africans) won’t have a lot to do. Spain’s countryside already is depopulated — you don’t see a settlement between Seville and Madrid. All the smart Spaniards will be working in Germany or some other place where there are jobs. Castles in Spain will be a bargain before long. And Berlin real estate will be expensive.

Spaniards never lived in rural aeras, but in agglomerations, because lands were owned by big (and rich) land owners. You don’t find this scarce rural population in France, Germany, Italy… small land owners were numerous.

Seville aeras are mostly ocuupied by oranges plantations

Don’t dream, not all the small Spaniards will go to Germany, suffice that another Aznar recovers the government and throws the EU and Merkel out, prints pesetas, and spain can hope for growth again. Don’t forget Spain ties with latin America

“All the smart Spaniards will be working in Germany or some other place where there are jobs.”

I´m not so sanguine about the prospects for Germany. Germans are busy building the GDR 2. Even Germany cannot afford socialism in the long run.

Sure, by comparison, the fundamentals look good. The economy does well now – but it is only making up for low growth and falling real wages in recent years. And part of the current boom is due to Germans liquidating their savings and putting them in real estate because they are nervous about the future. Spend it now, is the general feeling. Nor is unemployment actually low, not by the standards the US used to have before Obama.

The burden of propping up the EU, the staggering cost of domestic policies and the gradual breakdown of federalism will have consequences. The nominally conservative government is in fact executing the red-green agenda, from insane energy policies to social engineering. The opposition? Incredibly, they would be far worse.

There is a constant movement to the left and to collectivism in society. Ideas that were discredited in 1989 are back. Leading politicians are now talking openly about a duty(!) to send your toddlers to daycare facilities. Oh, and about needing a new constitution. Not since 1945 have German politicans so openly acted above the law, with not much of an outcry. The media are uniformly leftwing, with the exception of one or two newspapers which aren´t leading in circulation.

The irony is that Germans talk endlessly about sustainable development but they don´t understand the meaning of it.

Hungary is an example of what happens when people lose their pride and independence. nce a proud and sovereign people, Hungary now lies prostrate before the behemoth of global corporatism. The greed of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart have crushed and enslaved this small nation like so many others and set up right-wing demagogues like Jobbik to provide them with distraction and false hope.

What they need is a movement of true compassion and social justice that abolishes corporations and greed and makes sure all people are cared for. Perhaps with a Democrat in the White House they could get away with it because under a Republican the US military would be ordered to crush any movement for worker justice lest it set a good example for workers in America and around the world like was done in Vietnam, Grenada, Nicauragua, Chile, and so many others.

Worker justice is largely immaterial if there are no occupations to work, or workers to work them. I think the thrust of this thread has been: cultural pessimism = no children, and Jew-hatred = no jobs, no jobs = more cultural pessimism, more bright people leave the country.

Donald Trump was interviewed recently and he sounded very sure that “many” European countries would go back to their own currencies. He was particularly interested in buying property in Spain, after this happens and prices go down to rock bottom levels.

After being asked, though, he didn’t sound too interested in buying anything in Greece, which perhaps is a sign of how far gone things are there.

Mr. Goldman, you are right about how the empty the Spanish country side is. Riding a train from Madrid to Seville several years ago, you see almost nothing except open land. There was one unfinished housing developed, though. Half-constructed houses abandoned. Thanks for your essays on the financial crises and the Arab Revolts. Even Thomas Friedman now seems to have deduced that they are not going to produce liberal democracy. He hasn’t yet realized that we are probably in for a 30-years war among the tribes. We may need to consult some of your back essays on Cardinal Richielieu for insight, in the upcoming years.

Spengler, you omit perhaps their most important scientist of all, the towering political scientist George Soros. After he launched himself from obscurity by selling a list of names and addresses of Jewish art owners to the Nazis, he began his climb. Luckily for us, after a series of currency plays leveraging the instability in sovereign currencies caused by leftists, George chose to bring his science to America. Personally, I benefitted from that when Minnesota installed one of the many Attorneys General funded by Soros. We saw the benefits of this clever strategy when she was put in place just in time to oversee the installation of a Stewart Smalley into the U.S. Senate by way of election fraud. I hear he’s in the lab now, working on new things. But when he takes a break, he ain’t dining on gefilte; word is he’s munching on porterhouse.

Mr Piggy, it is interesting that you lump Soros with the Jews which may I hint is commonly done by right wing Jew haters. Here is just some information for you. Soros’s father was a Catholic convert and raised his son Catholic not Jewish. I know its just a minor point of information. Now lets get back to you. Being a pig farmer must bring you high social/economic status, right up there with garbage men and used car salesmen. I applaud you for that. There is one thing that I worry about. That is that you don’t get your wife and your livestock mixed up, which is common among pig farmers. I would hate to have your livestock get inbred.

You feel really special, denigrating “pig farmers, garbage men and used car salesmen,” don’t you? Compensating for lack of something, perhaps? You just know that he’s a “right-wing Jew-hater.” (By the way, I added the hyphens that you surely just forgot, and it’s socio-economic, not social/economic … and try to add some commas next time. Ok? Correct grammar makes one look so much smarter.)

You know, my socio-economic status is doing just fine. As a matter of fact, my job carries with it a certain cache wherever I go in the world (not that it’s always justified), but my background would certainly give you the vapors. Pig farmers, don’t you know. And my grandfather the pig farmer, one of finest people you could have ever known, still brings the family together in joy whenever we talk about him, even 18 years after his passing. Will anyone say that about you?

I don’t care whether you respond to this or not, because I will not answer you back. Beyond this one response you’re not worth my time.

And Mr. Goldman, I apologize for getting off subject, but this bigot just got on my last nerve, as we say in the South.

“Soros’s father was a Catholic convert and raised his son Catholic not Jewish.”

Andy — Your name (parenthesis and all) always makes me smile. However, no need to be so grumpy. I question your above statement. Clearly, Soros is Jewish. If you need a basis: His mother was Jewish, which is the Jewish standard. The real question is why this Hungarian Jew seems to hate Israel so much. My guess: Stockholm syndrome. My understanding is that Soros is a self-confessed Nazi collaborator during WWII. [Sixty Minutes Interview] As Aaron Klein says: Given the circumstances of his age and the times, Soros can’t be blamed for what he did during the war. But what he did and who he is/was seems to be established.

According to Wiki:

“Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary to a well-to-do, nonobservant Jewish family. His mother Elizabeth (also known as Erzebet), whom Tivadar married in 1924, came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop.”

“Soros’ family changed their name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism.”

Your remark about Jewish cuisine as the sole thing left from extinct communities is valid for many other places. It’s among the very few customs that survived from places where there are only stones (remaining synagogues, cemeteries) left, and it’s not even a uniquely European phenomenon.

The garage/estate/yard/tag sale after Hungary’s demise ought to be interesting. This might include property they plundered long ago from the Jews, who were the productive element in their former society.

Any discussion of recent Hungarian achievement is remiss if you dont mention the the Rubiks cube and their fine contribution to the world of pornography. According to Spengler’s theory, you know a nation is toast when they sell their women. I suspect as the country approaches extinction we can look forward to more ‘talented’ Hungarians coming on line…or shall i say ONLINE!

And btw Spengler, u should know. As a general rule, is spite of their greasy carbohydrate infused dastronomy, Hungarian Jews in general, the religious in particular are some of the most vapid, gaudy, money grubbing, gold digging arrogant (without grounds) Jews around. Just one notch above the Romanians on the bottom of the Ashkenazi food chain! Speaking of which, I had this great epiphany on my recent trip to the Ukraine. If anyone wonders why so many Jews suck, its real simple. Its because we come from horrible places like Eastern Europe and the Arab World. As my old Yeshiva Rebbe, who I used to refer as “The Rat” used to say…

Of course you find it objectionable! That is because you live in the gilded halls of the Upper East Side. If a persons sole experience with Jews were limited to the Upper East Side, one would certainly believe that the Jews really r the Masters of The Universe…and with good cause. Hop on a subway and go spend a Shabbat in Borough Park or Williamsburg and get back to me. Or better, take a trip to Uman in Ukraine around Rosh Hashana time! I am your biggest fan David, but your views on Jewish/Israeli exceptional-ism betray a MAJOR elitist and dare I say ‘provincial’ naivete! (Funny, hard to think of the UES as provincial…but I think u get my point)

Your attitude is quite common among UES Jews but really you are clueless on this matter!

Im not disputing Jewish Exceptional ism. But the Hungarian Jews in particular r extremely vapid and gaudy. David just thinks that ALL Jews, especially the Orthodox and Israelis r like the ones on the UES. They are not! So the fact that he has a bunch of talented Hungarian friends is only because of his status. Even Blacks and Latinos on the UES r exceptional!

And while our talented people are numerous relative to our numbers. MOST of us r just ordinary. And David seems to think that some how all Jews have some higher level of morality and talent than everyone else. I can tell u that there r MANY MANY misanthropic Jews, particularly Israeli and Charidi. DAvid seems to think they arent as bad as the Jihadis. He is right of course, but only because they have been civilized by Western Civilization. Left to their own devices the Charidim would be no different than the Jihadis. Remember, MANY big Orthodox rabbis supported Hitler and Fascism when he first came to power.

I can say objectively in my many travels throughout the world. SOme of the most horrible misanthropic people I have met are Jews, particularly Israelis. And I can say that the masses of Hungarian Jews in this country r vapid and fit in to all the negative sterotypes of Jews. Hungarians and Roamnians r at the bottom of the Ashkenazi food chain.

And I suspect most famous Hungarian Jews r more Hungarian and less Jews

Among the death loving states are Russia and ALL the old states of the defunct Soviet Union with the exception of the USSR Muslim states. Prolonged exposure to Marxism results in hate for life. The US should take note.

Better still than Jewish cooking institute in Budapest would be mass immigration to Tel Aviv and a new wave of trendy “Bubbe and Zaida” style restaurants on Ben Yehuda Avenue. The ones there now are horrible. I believe it could be a trend! The last time I was there a fried potato with paprika in pita was considered the “hottest thing.” Imagine some real old Jewish hungarian cuisine! Might almost make south Tel Aviv tolerable amongst all the Bahaus…

There used to be at least 3 pastry shops (one of them on Rehov Ben Yehuda Strasse) in Tel Aviv, who made those “old time” delicious cakes. The owners-bakers passed away, and Israeli taste moved on.
Besides, Mitteleuropa cuisine does not really fit Israeli climate. And state of mind. Vestiges of those culinary traditions are more likely to be found in family contexts.

This seems to be a disturbing trend in Europe these days. You have the rise of the far right again in Hungary and the Greek Nazi party did very well in the recent Greek elections. Seems that whenever you have really bad economic times, either the far right or the communists somehow try to get back into power. If economic times get much worse in Europe (and they will, trust me), you will see more of this, not less. Seems like we’re sailing back into the late 1930s, just before World War II. Only this time the fast rise of fascism will probably come in some other country rather than Germany, such as Spain, Italy, or even Greece. As the old saying goes, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often does rhyme.

I actually live here in the Magyarország, and it reminds me more of Cleveland or Steubenville than anyplace else I can think of. They’ve welcomed me (an average American), and my wife (a Hungarian) and I are raising our kids here. For now.

Yes, the Hungarians are a dour people, but then, so are the Scots. Spend some time in Glasgow if you want serious depression.

Re: Whiskey’s comments, most Hungarian women I talk to (and they are beautiful women, truly) find Hungarian men too immature to be serious spousal material. But then, I know plenty of Hungarian men who find their women too demanding. I suspect Materialism’s siren song, plus Feminism’s misanthropy, has slammed the natural tension between the sexes into a gearbox-busting double-clutch, for various widely traveled friends of mine report the same sort of comments from Finland to Germany to France, etc.

So maybe that is true everywhere.

As for the Hungarians generally, they are kinda grim, but they DO have a strong sense of (dark) humor. The average person might find it depressing, but being as Irish as I am, I’m used to it. The Magyars are not one-dimensional.

I suspect it helps to think of the Magyars this way: give ‘em some credit because they rose up against oppression twice in a century, and the world either ignored them or helped smash ‘em. They are not happy with the last century and a half, but if you had their history, you’d be glum too.

They rebelled against the ridiculous Austrians back in the 1848 and it was only the Russians coming in to flatten their armies that prevented them from winning independence outright. It infuriated them. Defeat the Austrians to be defeated by the Russians just to be given back to the Austrians. Pure Hell. Before that debacle, of course, they lost their independence to the Turks after the Battle of Mohács in 1526 (their king died fighting in that battle, too), and from that date till Ferenc Deák made a deal with the Austrians creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they were treated as only Central European Peasants could be treated, while at the same time being the human front lines of the endless war between the Austrians and the Turks. You wouldn’t have wanted to have had to live through those times.

But they never forgot that once, though, they had been an important country in Europe. A bulwark against the Mongols, then against the Turks. Civilization, culture, learning flourished here. Then the Turks came and totally trashed it out.

So, 1848. They tried. Desperately. Their defeat left them deeply damaged in their collective spirit. Rubbing salt in the wound was the growing nationalism of Europe at that time in linguistics, etc., which helps explain their own nationalistic language attitudes, A, and B, the equally strong attitudes of what they called “the Nationalities”, those non-Hun Huns. After having lived together for centuries, the Nationalities wanted out.

The joke was, though, on the Nationalities, for as it was actually joked: “The Austrians gave the Nationalities as a reward (for helping the Austrians hold on to Hungary) what they gave to the Hungarians as a punishment (for trying to be free of Austria).”

(The Austrians were about as incompetent as the current mayoral regime in Chicago.)

Then again the Magyar rose against the Soviets in 1956. The rest of the Central Europeans were cowed by the Russians, but the Magyar fought. That has to count for something. However, this rising also failed. For the Americans shrugged and said, “Sorry, fellas, but you jumped the gun, and we have to cover for the Brits and the French who sent their militaries to make fools of themselves in the Suez.” (And Eisenhower helped make sure the Brits and French lost in the Suez.) 1956 was an amazing event, a triumph of the human spirit. Yet once again, the Magyars were deeply, deeply smashed down and spiritually, nearly destroyed.

So, twice, the Hungarians showed actual courage and a deep longing for freedom. Yes, they’ve got a lot of sins, but I respect them for trying, at least, to be free.

Older Huns I talk to are STILL extremely angry about the U.S. not helping them in ’56, BTW, and I have a great friend who worked in relief camps in Austria that held Magyar refugees at that time. He’s a true “Philomagyar”. They DO exist. Our Cold War propaganda could be said to have encouraged the Hungarians in 1956, and we certainly dropped the ball on ‘em. We wasted our blood and treasure in Vietnam in the ’60s when we coulda won freedom for (at least part of) Central Europe in the ’50s.

So how wonderful were we?

But we hardly brood on that–most of us hardly know we had any part in the Hungarian Rising of ’56 to begin with. (Most Americans don’t even know there WAS an uprising in 1956. There’s probably plenty of our fellow citizens who don’t even know there’s a Hungary.)

What World War I did, though, besides pointlessly murder my wife’s mother’s grandfather and father-in-law’s grandfather, shot on far-away battlefields of a war that was totally pointless, was to deprive Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its population. Sure, many areas weren’t possessed of Huns at all, but large sections of pure Hun-populations were cut off from the country. That’s when the Hungarians SHOULD have fought to the death, but World War I left them prostrate.

This titanic betrayal will forever haunt the Magyars–until they go extinct, that is, (if they do). Ask any Hungarian what “Trianon” means to them. You’ll find out.

In World War II, the Horthy government joined with the Nazis, it is true, but then, as a blogger stated above, it wasn’t the Hungarian government slaughtering Jews until the Nazis took the place over (then the Arrow Cross, the Hun version of the Nazis, joined in. Yes, of course, there WERE Magyar Nazi-types, which shouldn’t be forgotten or downplayed. But most Hungarians weren’t anti-Semitic like the Germans were, or even the French. Jews flourished here for centuries, as our Mr. Goldman mentioned. When left to themselves, the Magyar (Jewish, German, Slavic, etc) flourished. (The later 1930s saw the First and Second Jewish Laws, which harassed Jews—but had Hitler never come to power in Germany, how likely is it that the Hungarians would have developed such idiocy on their own?

So, without making excuses, I will point out that the Hungarians got involved with Nazi Germany for two reasons–they had no way of defending themselves against Germany to begin with, and Germany was calling all the shots in this region in the 1930s. (Check out the story of Prime Minister Béla Imrédy—whose wretched life encapsulates a lot of Hungary’s miserable situation at the time.) Also, the Germans had promised the Hungarian government Transylvania back. You can’t imagine how important Transylvania is to the Magyars. It is sort of a Shangri-La “True Magyar Homeland” for them. Transylvania wasn’t some Count Dracula theme park. It had been for centuries the only Magyar-speaking segment of the old Kingdom of Hungary to survive the Turks, the “Eastern Hungarian Kingdom”, and forerunner of the Principality of Transylvania. It was an autonomous region between Greater Turkey and the Holy Roman Empire. Historically, then, it became a land of freedom, i.e., freedom of religion (it was mostly Protestant), trade, culture, in the national imagery of the Magyar.

To lose it to the Romanians, of all people, drove the Magyar nuts. It still does.

To talk to Magyars (if you get to know them well enough–they’re not open and easy to get to know, but then, look at their history; though if you DO make friends, they’re “friends for life”) is to be amazed at the antisemitism you hear. But if you persevere with them, you find they’re not anti-Jewish the religion or religious Hungarian Jews, but the George Soros types. One has to understand that there were/are a lot of these non-religious Jewish Hungarians who joined the Communists and supported the Russians (whom the Magyar loathe, as you can imagine from the history). Sure, some out-and-out bigots of ALL Jews EVERYWHERE do exist, (see Arrow Cross above) but mostly it is a feeling that too many non-religious Jews played the George Soros roll in the Communist party, and so on.

Remember, in 2002 (and again in 2006) the Socialists won the Hungarian national elections, that second time the prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, boasting about how they lied to get re-elected and how they took personal advantage of the situation–what an American would now call classic Obama crony-capitalism. And that in turn led to mass protests against the Gyurcsány government between 17 September and 23 October, 2006, which the government handled very roughly. You can’t imagine, unless you live here, how galling all that was to patriotic Magyars. If you look for Jobbik’s origins, in short, delve first into all this 21st century history, rather than reading a lot of in-bred antisemitism (which does exist in Central Europe, but not as bad in Hungary as in some other countries here) into it all.

Anyway, I suppose my point is, the anti-Semitic situation here is extremely complicated. For example, don’t forget that on October 10th, 2007, at Hotel Hilton in Tel-Aviv, Israeli President Shimon Peres said: “We are buying up Manhattan, Hungary, Romania and Poland.” They still talk about that around here. It is all just, simply, complicated.

BTW, I have seen a lot of Jews around Budapest at least, over the years; I mean Orthodox. It is like seeing nuns and priests in cassocks on the street–which you see here, too. (But which you won’t see in enlightened France, not w/o some idiot following them around shouting stupidities.)

I’m sorry the Hungarian people appear to be going extinct. Don’t be too hard on the Hungarians if they get suicidal about all of that. But then all Europe seems to be going extinct, as well. White North America is going to follow in its turn, too, it seems. But what can we expect of a Western culture that has abandoned God for Materialism, Feminist misanthropy, and PC kookiness?

I thought I was the only lunatic American to voluntarily live here in Hungary. As with you, my wife is Hungarian (the reason I stayed here in the first place), and we are raising our children here as well. It is definitely not an easy row to hoe, as you well know. I don’t even know if it would be worth it to go back to the USA at this point, as I think Hungary is only about 10-15 years ahead of the USA in the slide into chaos (even less if BHO gets re-elected).

Yep, there’s at least two of us. There’s probably even more, but God only knows how we’d find ‘em.

After reading all these comments, I’m tempted to write a book on Hungary. It would help if I had multiple personalities, for the place seems to be such that everyone who looks into it comes away with quite different impressions. The book would half be about non-Hungarian perceptions of the place, rather than my own, for as I say, as far as I know, it’s about like old ethnic Cleveland or Pittsburgh would be. The rest would be Hungarian perceptions of their own country, though I’d have to travel across Europe to talk to most of them. Young educated people get out about as fast as they can.

Going back to the States would be hard, wouldn’t it? For one thing, I’d have to make my own bread. Hungarian breads (and all the various bakeshops) are wonderful, aren’t they?

And it looks like the average school here (at least in Budapest) is as good as the best upper-middle class parochial schools in the U.S., with the private schools here (that you have to pay for) on par with the elite private schools in the U.S.

If we survive (and let’s face it, some flash mob in the U.S. might take a guy out at any time anyway, and Chicago is worse than all of Afghanistan combined–walking around most of Budapest is one heckuva lot safer than accidentally taking the wrong route from the Short North in Columbus, Ohio, to OSU, for instance) our kids will be multilingual and otherwise possessed of an excellent education.

“To lose it to the Romanians, of all people, drove the Magyar nuts. It still does.”

Your paean to the Hungarians love of freedom is belied by this line. If Hungarians were right to fight for their freedom, they had no grounds to object if the Transylvanian Romanians sought freedom too.

As you may know, but the general public likely doesn’t, Romanians (who were around 60% of the population of pre-war Transylvania) were legally disenfranchised. They weren’t even allowed to enter certain towns. Their language was illegal. No one likes to get kicked out of the driver’s seat, but in Transylvania, it was probably inevitable.

Nonetheless, Romania would never have successfully invaded Hungary — around 10% of Romania’s population (not army) had been killed in WW1 and the aftermath — but for Bela Kun’s Communist coup and the ensuing civil war.

While your basic premise that the Romanian population of Transylvania was not accorded the deference that their numbers warrented in pre-1918 Hungary is one I can agree with, you do state some “facts” to support this that are not entirely true.

1) Romanians were legally disenfranchised. Not true, or at least not literally true. While the franchise in Dualist Hungary was very restricted, in that only about 7% of the total population was qualified as electors, this did not include a de jure disqualification of any particular ethno-linguistic group. The qualifications were based on noble birth, as well as intellectual and financial qualifications. As the Transylvanian Romanians were largely of peasant origin, the vast majority of Romanians were disqualified, as were the vast majority of ehtnic Hungarians (Magyars). But it is incorrect to say that Romanians were legally disenfranchised as such. In fact, in the 1906 parliamentary elections, the Romanain National Party stood candidates in 44 constituencies, which returned 16 members of parliament. The Slovak National Party returned 7 MP’s, and the Serb National Party 2. When one considers that there were 412 members of parliament, this does not add up to a large number, but it isn’t nothing either. Clearly, there were Romanians (as well as Slovaks and Serbs) who were enfranchised, and were able to congregate into political associations. By the way, the Croats had their own seperate assembly (the Sabor) so were not represented among the MP’s in the Budapest parliament.

2) Romanians were not allowed to enter certain towns. Not even sure where this one comes from, so I can’t really address it completely. Perhaps it has something to do with the prohibitions against movement by serfs, but serfdom was ended in Hungary during the 1848-49 Revolution, including the duties of peasants to provide uncompensated labor (robota) on noble land. It is possible that perhaps some de facto prohibitions may have continued after that date, but it was certainly not a legal restriction placed by Hungarian law.

3) The Romanian language was illegal. Again, not according to law. In fact, the Hungarian Nationalities Act of 1868, which was passed as part of the constitution of Hungary after the Compromise which established Austria and Hungary as seperate constitutional monarchies sharing a common sovereign, made it clear that all language rights of minorities should be respected. Over time, this was interpreted to mean that individuals had a right to their language, and to use their language at home and to have primary education and religious facilities in which to use their language. It did not recognize corporate rights to language (much the same as France), and stated that there was only one political nation in Hungary, although there were many nationalities. Some have pointed to the Apponyi Language Laws of 1907, which required that all school children be proficient in the Hungarian language by the 5th grade as an attempt to eradicate all other laguages, and that may be an accurate judgement, but it did not make the use of Romanian (or any other language)illegal, as such. This did make Hungarian the official language of the Kingdom, so all official business was conducted in Hungarian, which was certainly an onerous burden to place on non-Hungarian speakers. However, the idea that if two people were overheard speaking Romanian on the street corner or in the local coffee house that they could be hauled away by the local gendarms has no basis in fact.

Now, none of the above should be taken to mean that I believe that there was no discrimination against ethnic minorities in the historic Kingdom of Hungary. The ethnic minorities, as well as the vast majority of the Magyar population, did not have political rights as we understand them today. However, they did have certain civil rights which were not apportioned according to nationality.

Obviously the situation in Transylvania in 1914 had improved a bit for the Romanians over the situation in 1850. However, for hundreds of years before that, Romanians had been effectively denied all civil rights because they were not a “recognized nation.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unio_Trium_Nationum

As for certain towns, the Saxon towns generally didn’t permit Romanians to enter. Obviously, again, I’m speaking not of 1914 but of the hundreds of years before in which that had been the prevailing state of affairs.

Perhaps if the Hungarians had had any credibility on their minorities policy, the Romanians wouldn’t have been so adamantly opposed to remaining under Hungarian rule.

hmm, for Suez in 1956, the Soviets made noise about the Franco-Brit-Israeli campain, because they wanted that the world forget that they were Repressing the Hungarians. Eisenhower didn’t want to get a direct confrontation with the Soviets, as Britain and France were NATO contries, the other NATO members might have been requested to participate into the operation. Britain surrendered to Eisenhower first, otherwise no more Marshall plan money. France was offered a compensation, the nuclear bomb. Otherwise the campain was but justified. For France it would have cut the FLN offices in Cairo from the algerian rebels, for it was from Nasser Egypt, that subsidies came to them, and also the Saudi money transitted through Cairo, and of course, the Soviets support.

Eisenhower had a short sight in geopolicies, if the Suez Campain had succeeded, probably that the ME and the Maghreb would have a different outlook today.

An Préachán, Your comment is just great, kudos! As a Pole, I am SO VERY MUCH fed up with being lectured to be the glorious (self-declared) civilized western part of Europe who is,basically, treating us as their colonies. The very same West, who, and I am observing this in France on a daily basis, has lost its identity,who,for whatever reason, is not able any more to integrate non-European peoples (especially muslims), on whos streets f.e Jewish people are not able to feel safe anymore and Police is afraid to target muslims/Blacks for fear of being labeled as rascists. Where “feminists” are telling Polish women how very opressed they are,how backwards our Country (one of the first in Europe to grant women the right to vote,homosexuals the right not to be thrown in prison) and also Hungary,is ect. all this by lecturing to us as if we would be some African tribe who is Meeting with the White man for the first time. This arrogance, this ignorance,its just way to much. Western Europe NEVER EVER had to fight for their freedom, they, in my eyes, are spoiled children, spoiled by Uncle Sam and damn ungratful about it,too. Greetings from Crakow!

Hungary certainly got much worse than it deserved after World War I, and the loss of Transylvania to Romania was unfair. But Horthy’s behavior during World War II is unforgivable. He did not have to declare war on the Soviet Union after the Kassa attack, and could have resisted providing Hungarian troops to Hitler.

As for the Hungarians: I do not propose to single them out as anti-Semites. The epidemic of Horthy nostalgia and the little eruptions of Jew hatred of the past few years, as I wrote, reflect an extreme form of cultural pessimism. The disappearance of the Magyar is tragic.

Mr. Goldman,
I would have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of Horthy’s behaviour during WWII as “unforgivable.” I have no intention of becoming a Horthyite apologist, but I think the historical record needs to be viewed in a realistic light. It may be true that Horthy did not “have to” declare war on the USSR following the Kassa attack (which may have been of dubious provenance), and he may well have been able to resist sending troops to the war against the Soviet Union…for a while. However, one must look at the situation from the point of view of the time period, not from a safe position in the present. Hungary, along with the other Habsburg successor states, were small minnows swimming between the two sharks of Germany and the USSR. France and the UK had proved they were willing to sell-out their erstwhile East-Central European allies, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, from the time of the Locarno Treaty (1925) right up until 1939. That left two basic possibilities for security, an “understanding” with either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Attempting to walk a completely neutral line would have probably ended as it did with Austria and the Baltic States.
I think this also confuses the Hitler we know of post-1945 as the same figure that people were aware of prior to that time. This is simply an ahistorical view point. Individuals as varied as Neville Chamberline, Joe Kennedy and Joe Stalin all figured that Hitler was a leader that could be dealt with in a rational way, not the sociopathic mass murderer that we know of today. Horthy’s conservative-aristocratic nature made him reflexively anti-communist, not to mention the stigma of the Bela Kun Hungarian Soviet government of 1919, which he saw as being the cause of much of Hungary’s problems.
Perhaps this still makes Horthy’s actions “unforgivable” in the eyes of some. Better to be the valiant Poles, who defied the Nazis, and managed to get squashed between them and the Soviets, and later to be sold out by the USA and UK at Yalta. In short, there were many possibilities that Horthy and/or the Hungarians might have made from 1920 to 1944 which could have been different, including not signing the Trianon Treaty at all. Each would have had as dire a consequence than the one which was taken. If you study Hungarian history, you will find that they measure mere survival as a victory, which is certainly a different standard than that which Americans are accustomed to. Having survived the Mongol invasion, Ottoman occupation, Habsburg domination and Soviet “guidance” for most of the past 1000 years, the mere ability to maintain a national identity is seen as a significant accomplishment. If one views Horthy’s actions in that light, they can at least become understandable, if not ultimately forgivable.

I understand Mr. Goldman being concerned for his friends in Hungary, but somehow I think (and no offense, Marie Claude, truly) but a French Jewish citizen has a better chance of being taken out in violence than a Hungarian Jewish citizen. Yes, yes, that’s because France is overrun with Muslim immigrants, and I thank God Hungary hasn’t got that wretched problem.

But also, as was pointed out above, the western EU core members are making it harder for Jewish life in actuality (circumcision, kosher food, etc) than is the case here in Magyarland.

As for Mr. Goldman and Horthy, I think a quick review of the life of Prime Minister Béla Imrédy (pm in ’38) is VERY instructive. He started out doing the right thing, and apparently supported by Horthy, but was quickly pressured into supporting the Nazis and Italian Fascists, eventually becoming more Nazi than the Nazis themselves, sort of. For all his balancing act, for all his squirming, he was damned both ways, declared a Jew, actually (he had Jewish ancestry) etc etc, and he ended up being shot after the war for being a traitor. A life as miserable as I could imagine a life to be.

And one which gives insight into the dark, gloomy, grim Hungarian mindset.

As you say, sure, Hungary could have resisted the Nazis, but they would have ended up like Yugoslavia in the end, and what good did it all do for Yugoslavia? That country doesn’t even exist anymore.

This part of the world is a rough place. But I wonder what the excuse France and the western EU countries can manage for their predicament, both historical and current?

Well, the Poles did the best they could.The effect? Writing about “Nazis” (G-d forbid, “Germans”, that would be,ehm,not nice) and “Polish death camps” has become the norm. Funny story,actually, the Polish Government DID EVERYTHING HUMANELY possible while American Jews,well, did not give a hoot.(Dont believe me? check the New York Times articles during WW2.you will be surprised/dissapointed).So I guess, as Long as are not the French,Soviets,British or Americans whatever you could have done would have brought along the same. Im sorry to say this,but I cant
help Feeling that,instead of concentrating on what is great in Judaism, to rebuild Jewish spirituality,culture ect. too many Jewish people seem to have an unhealthy Obsession with fighting real or imagined anti-Semitism.

This is the second unfavorable article about Hungary that PJM has published this week.

Ron Radosh linked to an article in Foreign Policy that appeared to be written by a dyed-in-the-wool EU supporter who only interviewed current government opponents and former elites who were no longer treated as elite after the election and presented the interviews for highest emotional impact. For those reasons, the article did not leave me convinced.

To the best of my knowledge, Hungary has not outlawed Kosher slaughter as have Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Holland. Hungary has not banned circumcision as has Germany and as Sweden tried. No Jews have been pulled off the streets, tortured and killed in Hungary as has happened in France.

Yet Hungary earns the opprobrium of all and is threatened with EU sanctions.

In a good number of articles, The Brussels Journal present evidence that this is an overreaction and not fair.

In your estimation, is The Brussels Journal an anti-semetic, fascist organization to take such a position? They seem to be the odd man out.

Marie Claude: I am speaking of more recent events. Ilan Halimi (Hebrew: אילן חלימי‎) was a young French Jewish man kidnapped on 21 January 2006 by a gang called “the Gang of Barbarians” (Gang des Barbares) and subsequently tortured, over a period of three weeks, resulting in his death. The murder was motivated by antisemitism and money.

Marie Claude: I was merely wondering why all of these modern-day European governments that have specific anti-semetic laws and policies or who have had horrible anti-semetic crimes committed within their jurisdictions have not been taken to the woodshed like Hungary has – which to the best of my knowledge has done none of these things. Memories of Horthy or villagers erecting statues have not instigated what already exists elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps, it will, but it hasn’t seemed to yet.

I mentioned France after a relatively long list of other countries because it is true that France has seen an increase of anti-semetic violence: From the case mentioned, to the school children & rabbi, to the hammer attacks in Lyon. It just what’s happening. There’s no animosity involved. But, the EU has not attacked the French government nor tried to have it changed – nor any of the other governments in the list.

“I was merely wondering why all of these modern-day European governments that have specific anti-semetic laws and policies or who have had horrible anti-semetic crimes committed within their jurisdictions have not been taken to the woodshed like Hungary has – which to the best of my knowledge has done none of these things. Memories of Horthy or villagers erecting statues have not instigated what already exists elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps, it will, but it hasn’t seemed to yet.”

Anti-semitic laws? first news, where did you find this BS?

Crimes, how many? and from whom?

Hungary hasn’t a politised Muslim community, which sees any attack on the Palestinians by Israel as a attack on their brothers, Some simplemind Muslims tend to assimilate the Jews in our countries as also responsible of what happens in ME. These are more often insults or tags on Jewish buildings, crimes are rare, but rather from avered criminals who would take the Jews as a opportune escuse for a convenient attack, the Jews aren’t their only victims too. These actions have always been sued in Court, and condamned.

“I mentioned France after a relatively long list of other countries because it is true that France has seen an increase of anti-semetic violence: From the case mentioned, to the school children & rabbi, to the hammer attacks in Lyon. It just what’s happening. There’s no animosity involved. But, the EU has not attacked the French government nor tried to have it changed – nor any of the other governments in the list.”

All right, and these crimes, which France hasn’t the monopole, would be a reason why france should be put into a special list?

Actually there’s no such raison that justifies that a democratic country, where the police, and Justice exert their full power, according to our constitution, where, I repeat, there’s no anti-semit laws, nor any discriminatory laws for any population, in the contrary, our code of laws allow our juges to condamn any antisemit discourse (which isn’t punished in countries that revendicate “freedom of speech”), and the deny of Holocaust (written in the constitution)

If such hateful discourses were to be punished in your countries, then there wouldn’t be enough places in your prisons.

“I was merely wondering why all of these modern-day European governments that have specific anti-semetic laws and policies or who have had horrible anti-semetic crimes committed within their jurisdictions have not been taken to the woodshed like Hungary has – which to the best of my knowledge has done none of these things. Memories of Horthy or villagers erecting statues have not instigated what already exists elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps, it will, but it hasn’t seemed to yet.”

Anti-semitic laws? first news, where did you find this BS?

Crimes, how many? and from whom?

Hungary hasn’t a politised Muslim community, which sees any attack on the Palestinians by Israel as a attack on their brothers, Some simplemind Muslims tend to assimilate the Jews in our countries as also responsible of what happens in ME. These are more often insults or tags on Jewish buildings, crimes are rare, but rather from avered criminals who would take the Jews as a opportune escuse for a convenient attack, the Jews aren’t their only victims too. These actions have always been sued in Court, and condamned.

-http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_gang_des_barbares

may-be you should read more statistics, France is really not the worst country in Europe for the Jews:

“I mentioned France after a relatively long list of other countries because it is true that France has seen an increase of anti-semetic violence: From the case mentioned, to the school children & rabbi, to the hammer attacks in Lyon. It just what’s happening. There’s no animosity involved. But, the EU has not attacked the French government nor tried to have it changed – nor any of the other governments in the list.”

All right, and these crimes, which France hasn’t the monopole, would be a reason why france should be put into a special list?

Actually there’s no such raison that justifies that a democratic country, where the police, and Justice exert their full power, according to our constitution, where, I repeat, there’s no anti-semit laws, nor any discriminatory laws for any population, in the contrary, our code of laws allow our juges to condamn any antisemit discourse (which isn’t punished in countries that revendicate “freedom of speech”), and the deny of Holocaust (written in the constitution)

If such hateful discourses were to be punished in your countries, then there wouldn’t be enough places in your prisons.

Anti minorities, anti immigration and anti semitism is everywhere. Capitalism and communism both promote dominance of one group over all others. I doubt that France, Easter European countries and America are that much different from each other in how they treat minorities. I would guess that hate crimes are proportional to population densities. Given that hate crimes is a rather recent term to be applied in courts, it will take a few more years to derive comparative statistics but it is likely that in time Marie Claude will be proven right. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Chicken liver on a treble hook is the best bait for catfish. Leave plenty of slack on the line for the catfish to grab the bait and swim away without resistance otherwise it will spit out the hook before snagging. Smoked catfish on saltine crackers and vodka soda with a squeeze of lime make for a complete meal.

Please, it was extremely clear that Jake was talking about recent events in France, and those events are very relevant to the point he was making. Your very negative response to Jake’s comment were so off-point and in truth insulting that it makes you appear to be small-minded ignorant person.

The wretched EUcrats are putting tremendous pressure on Hungary to conform. Europe is so Orwellian these days–it’s a freak show.

I’m convinced that Hungarians (and Poles and Czechs and so on) have far more to fear from the EU and the rise of the Muslims in the western countries than from the likes of Viktor Orbán, or even the Jobbik crowd, who are far more animated about the Roma, really, I think–though I don’t mean to dismiss Mr. Goldman’s concerns–antisemitic talk is open here, out and loud, you know, about like in some Leftist circles we know closer to home.

I visited Prague and Budapest in 2003. Prague was lovely, with an increasing Jewish population, mainly from the former Soviet Union. The Jewish Quarter had tons of tourists and locals. Budapest was also lovely, but a stark contrast to the lively and seemingly happy people I saw in Prague. A lot less tourists as well. What troubled me most about Budapest was the swastikas drawn on the streets and bus shelters. They were everywhere. I was happy to leave there.

I was stationed in Budapest for 6 mos. in 2002 and it is still a fond memory, albeit with bittersweet parts due to the echoes of the Holocaust and the contemporary revanchism and nostalgia for native fascists of some Hungarians.

The Budapest Jewish community in 2002 had a large Russian émigré component, as well as a significant number of Israelis. The Israelis were mostly studying at medical and music schools although the success of some Israelis and Russian Jews in the real estate stampede engendered some paranoia and racism.

Mogilevich contributed a fair amount to the reconstruction of Budapest’s grand Dohany synagogue and had a plaque on the wall (apparently before he was known to be a genuine notorious mobster) to honor his parents. Some Hungarians enjoyed pointing this out as evidence of the corrupt Jewish influence. I think this may have been due in part to jealousy that this foreign Jewish mobster was so much more successful than the local Hungarian mobsters (apparently occupied with pimping underage Moldovan girls and running “clip” joints on Vaci Utca.

The Dohany Utca synagogue (Neolog denomination, a sort of European version of Reform Judaism) was an incredible structure but the services were sparsely attended. I used to go to a wonderful Chabad shul. The rebbe was an American who movedto Hungary around 1990, learned Hungarian (quite an achievement) and was a whirlwind in rebuilding Jewish communal institutions and representing the Jewish community. The rebbe would frequently host yeshiva bochurim (male seminary students) from around the world. These brave young men would travel to the most dangerous (for a Jew) areas of rural Hungary and Slovakia dressed in Chabad to visit and minister to isolated (mostly elderly) Jews.

Budapest was, for me, an extraordinary city due to its location, architecture and café/coffee house/club scene and the friendliness of its many cosmopolitan inhabitants. Overall, an atmosphere of Joie de vivre with a Masque of the Red Death spin – my subjective impression was that, in addition to folks trying to live normal lives, there was an unusually high incidence of suicide and adultery.

It seems there are just a handful of groups with high fertility rates: The Roma, the Amish, the Mormons, Hasidic Jews, and (some) old-school Catholics. Also (in the US, at least) evangelical Protestants. It would be fascinating to know, accordingly, , what the world will look like in 2112 AD.

Don’t count out the Russians quite yet — though it will take another generation or two to recover from the Great Patriotic War/USSR economic collapse double whammy, there’s still lotsa marginal farm and ranch land (even in European Russia) which could become useful again if climate change scorches the U.S. and southern Europe with more regularity (several Oklahoma cattlemen have already thrown in the towel and relocated to Russia with their herds — I suppose under the new specialist visa). Farming is the one profession left where having more kids is an advantage. At any rate I’m more bullish on Russia at the moment than crowded Germany.

1. The vast majority of Hungarians are PROUD of the intellectual achievements of Hungarian Jews, and separating them out as not “real” Hungarians betrays a complete lack of cultural understanding which would appall most Hungarians, including the vast majority of Hungarian Jews.

2. Hungarians appear to have a far more nuanced understanding of Jews than NYC Jews have of Hungarians. It is, unfortunately, not even vaguely unusual to see Orthodox from NY strolling around the VIth District acting like absolute and utter *louts,* engaging in behavior that would have them thrown out of shops in Manhattan, openly (and loudly) expressing their utter contempt for the Hungarians they encounter — and *of course* any resentment is attributed to anti-semitism. The first time I encountered it, I was shocked, and thought “what a jerk.” About the seventh or eighth time I saw it, I came to realize that a lot of folks who happen to be Orthodox are going to Hungary with a severe attitude problem they would never take to Paris or Berlin (or, the Orthodox tend to be jerks — but that’s not my experience elsewhere).

3. Hungarian birthrates are in the toilet at least partially because all of those groups which would normally sustain it (religious people) have been blatantly and openly either crapped upon or literally made into class-enemies in the recent past, and to this day, simply getting by in Hungary is quite difficult. The HUF-USD exchange rate another commenter mentioned only tells part of the story — even basic foodstuffs in Hungary are outrageously expensive compared to the average Hungarian’s buying power. Kicking these folks while they’re down and trying to recover from decades of systematic oppression is simply insipid — Mr. Goldman can and should do better than that.

I haven’t been in Budapest since 2002. At that time I lived in V and worked in VI. Identifiably Orthodox Jewish tourists were very rare, except for a few seminary students who I discussed in a comment above.

If there are many Orthodox visitors to Budapest these days I doubt they stray far beyond packaged tours to VIIth District (the old Jewish quarter) and perhaps an obligatory tour on the Danube. That would be unfortunate because they’d miss the chance to get to know the many cosmopolitan and pleasant Hungarians who do live in Budapest (I also doubt many Orthodox Jews go in for the club scene). On the other hand they’d avoid the chance of some hooligans blaming them for Trianon.

Religious folks weren’t made into class enemies in Spain and their BR is similar.

Orthodox (I assume you mean Haredi) Jews insulting Hungarians? Must be Galitzianer. In my brief visits to Budapest I didn’t notice this, but there used to be a lot of Haredi going through Budapest when Malev had a cheap (and quite good) flight from New York to Tel Aviv with a stopover. There are many Hungarians who are proud of Hungary’s Jewish heritage. But my Jewish friends in Budapest are terrified, and they’re not pushovers.

The vast majority of Hungarians are PROUD of the intellectual achievements of Hungarian Jews, and separating them out as not “real” Hungarians betrays a complete lack of cultural understanding which would appall most Hungarians,

It is a common practice among anti-Semites to be proud of their high achieving Jews; however, it is also a practice not to mention that they are Jewish. My first example is Maimonides, Spain is proud of him….as a Spaniard, Egypt is proud of him as an Egyptian, neither mentions him as a Jew. Albert Einstein is another example. Germany is proud of him, the US is proud of him, neither mentions him as a Jew. If I went to Jews with a single national identity, I could continue this list on and on. You would see very few mentioned as Jews. On the other hand, people such as George Soros (not a Jew) or Bernie Madoff are always mentioned as Jews. This brings me to one of my students asking me, “Why are Jews considered as not being white, after all you look white?”

Yet Einstein discipline wasn’t religion, so far being Jew isn’t a nationality, but a religious statute

In our modern democraties we don’t refer to persons by their religion, but by what they do. None would say that Descartes is a catholic philosopher and mathematician, nor Montaigne… while Pascal is as much known as a mathematician and as a catholic writer

Thank you Marie, I think I got it. Let me see if this example is right. Many French women are prostitutes. We don’t refer to them as prostitutes and French women. We just refer to them as French women.

Sorry Marie, I didn’t mean to insult your occupation, that is in a French way not a German way. Now jgets, I wouldn’t insult your parentage by using terms such as prostitutes. I find that very low and offensive. On the other hand, I have always loved your mother no matter what she says. By the way, let her know that she is out of beer and cheese. If you look through your family’s albums, you’ll see me in many of the pictures, although I’m always in the background. Now son, if I may call you that, have a good day and remember to change your underwear.

Marie that was low class especially about the foreskins. However, this also explains why so many Frenchmen avoid Frenchwomen and are gay. Please don’t tell me that this isn’t true. Also that Frenchmen who are straight prefer any other women to Frenchwomen. That’s no accident.

Out of all these subjects I chose the most nostalgic one – the gefilte fish (you can call it the stuffed carp). I was born in Moscow. My Mom was an expert on cooking the stuffed carp in a manner similar to the one in the romantic description given by David P. Goldman – but more complicated – and all my Gentile friends were eager to be invited for the feast which, by the way, had its own royal rules. She made it with pike too, but only out of harsh necessity when it was impossible to find carp in Moscow. From her point of view the wooden spike was to darn dry.
America disillusoned and offended me twice. The first time, when my Evangelical friend in order to comfort this Russian exile brought me in 1978 to a supermarket in New York and proudly pointed at the glass cans with so called gefilte fish. It looked and tasted very anti-Semitic. The second offence was when I discoved at the fish market in Washington DC that my holy carp was the cheapest fish in America.

Hungary’s extremism cannot be put down mostly to doomsday demographics. Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia have all lost even greater percentages of their population in the last 20 years – and while Serbia did have a powerful ultranationalist/xenophobic movement, it has faded.

Why are Hungary’s ultranationalists so strong? Is it too many Jews, or too many Roma?

Actually, it would be mainly due to the fact of too little money, and not enough opportunity. The average salary for a professional person in Hungary (i.e. doctor, teacher, etc) is about 500 dollars per month. Gas is 8-9 dollars a gallon, food is about as expensive as in the USA or even more so, and utilities are obscene. The GDP is “growing” at about 1.3% (which is a vast improvement over the -6.8% back in 2009). Official unemployment is at 11%, while the unemployment rate among people under 25 is 26%. People who do work generally have to have at least one side job as well, which is often “off the books.”

Pike are not what you get in the restaurant. I have caught and eaten fresh Canadian northern pike right from the lake. After that fish is a whole different experience. When I was in yeshiva I lived with a family from Hungary and had the best gefilte fish ever. Made fresh just before Shabbat from whole fish. Cannot eat the stuff in the jar since.

In fairness to the commenter above and in Spengler’s defense the Bulgarians were not great soldiers in the USSR during Barbarossa and their contribution was minimal compared to that of the Romanians, Italians, Finns and even the Spanish Blue division which fought around Leningrad (this was the subject of a recent film titled Hispansi or Spaniards about a group of Spanish Communists and Fascists who fought each other during the civil war meeting again a few years laterduring the horrible seige of Leningrad).

So what if the Hungarians die out. I cannot see why it should affect you in the slightest, nor is your historical reasoning sufficient to warrant lamenting Hunagry’s fate. Hungary is not a Jewish homeland, just a place where Jews (as others) lived. Many cultures lived, thrived and died in Europe. Other cultures lived in present day Hungary before the Maygars. Maybe some other culture will inhabit present day Hungary after them.

Every site I looked up gave me a number of 100,000 or less for the Jewish population of Hungary. Where did you come up with 200,000?

Bulgaria was a Nazi ally in WWII. What Jewish lives she saved (for whatever reason) she made up for with the death of other nationalities. Unless, of course , this is meaningless to you.

Bulgaria did not enthusiastically pursue war against the USSR (perhaps due to the common Orthodox Christian heritage and Russia’s role in liberating the country from the Turks in the 19th century). Bulgaria’s primary contributon to the Axis was allowing the German u-boats and fast boats and bombers to be based there for the attack on Sevastopol, which held out for nine months and didn’t fall to the fascist invader until the spring of 1942. By summer of 43′ after Kursk the German commanders were already making preparations to pull out.

I was mainly referring to the Bulgarian occupation of Northern Greece. Thankfully we are all grown up now and this is all history. Hopefully we will all continue to prosper in our common European home, welcoming new additions, Israelis amongst them, in blatant disregard to to the powers of evil who wish to divide us for the sake of their balance sheets.

I don’t think it’s escaped Spengler’s notice that no country in recent years has been erecting more new memorials to the Red Army and the deaths of so many Russians under fascism than Israel. Belarus also has some refurbished Soviet-era memorials. Anyone who wants to see a somewhat Saving Private Ryan glimpse of Barbarossa’s opening days can watch the Belarussian film “The Brest Fotress” free online.

I am a huge ally of Israel,but there is one thing that is just unacceptable to me-all These NEW monuments to one of the most inhumane Regime there was, the Soviet Union. Could s.o tell me if there is also a Monument to Zegota (only organization, Polish, in the whole of Europe dedicated to saving JEWISH people?) As far as I know: no. to be honest, this is just a Smash in the face of all those people who died in Soviet concentration camps, named gulags.Rather, it should be considered unjewish to honor such entities as the (btw very anti-Semitic) Soviet Union.

Bern, first of all,its not “the camps of Poland” but of Nazi Germany.And yes, that is a difference. Second:
Bishop Stepinac did save some Jews.Than again, he supported the Ustasha in Croatia and thus helped in the murder of thousands of Serbs,Gypsies ect. He was NOT awarded the title of Righteous from among the nations, because in the end, he did more wrong than right. As did the Soviet Union, which was horrendously anti-Semitic.How much so? Well, watch the documentary “The Soviet Story”-actually, Stalin had the NKVD CATCH Jews that had f.e fled Poland and DELIVER them right into the Hands of the German SS(heck,there is even photographic/film evidence to proof this). The Liberation was rather a side-product of enslaving half of Europe. But I guess is ok, I mean,apart from Poles,Baltics,Ukrainians,Hungarians ect. loosing their freedom,lives,liberty,happyness,culture,intelectuals,property,pieces of art NOTHING OF VALUE was lost. Im sure,one day, when Korea will be reunited s.o from North Korea will visit Isreal. When seeing the monuments dedicated to the Red Army (who helped Kim Il Sung build his Regime of terror) he or she will go WTF?!

Yeah, it’s truly a sad thing, the anti-Semitism which now exists in Hungary. Especially considering Hungary’s history – probably the best place for Jews in Central/Eastern Europe to be during the late 19th/early 20th century was the Hungarian Empire. Not that there was not anti-Semitism then, of course, but Jews tended to thrive in Hungary – hence the historical Jewish-Hungarian symbiosis that so many writers have commented on.

I find gefilte fisch disgusting in almost all of its forms. However, in 1964 or 1965 the grandmother of my dear departed friend David Stone came to visit him in Cambridge, Mass from her home in Bogaloosa, Mississippi. She made gef. f. from trout that were the equal of quenelle. Amazing really. Her mother, an immigrant from Poland invented the PoBoy sandwich, the quintessential emblem of southern plebian cooking. I doubt if she spoke English fluently when she performed this remarkable feat.

The learned concluded, at the end of the previous century, that towering piles of horse sh!t would doom cities. Unsurprisingly, no nationality is rushing to claim those idiots as their own. The learned of today, including jewish and gentile Hungarians, are concluding that lack of energy resources will doom cities. Cygani continue to laugh. If constitutions, patents and central banks drive innovation and consumption then industrious people might be mere by-products. Anyway, Soros couldn’t win if he answered to us in the court of public opinion. He is too “industrious”.

Maybe it was Hungarian scientists who hatched the nuclear winter propaganda back in the 70′s. If so then each of their guys is worth 10 from every other tribe.

Pinchline: There is nothing wrong with being a Hungarian Jew. Some of my best friends are Hungarian Jews. (borrowed from an SNL skit about gays)

Steven Wright: There is a fine line between fishing and standing by the shore looking like an idiot.

Allow me to add a link to one of my all time favorite movies: “Music Box” staring Jessica Lange, directed by Costa-Gavras and written by Joe Eszterhas (József Eszterhás born November 23, 1944 in Csakanydoroszlo, Hungary).

Mr Goldman, I am a long time fan, but this article is wrong in its assumptions, insights and conclusions. If Western media coverage is anything to go by, sadly it seems the Anglo-Saxon mind simply cannot understand Hungary.

The idea of “Hungarian Jews” and anti-Semitism in Hungary are both recent (1990s) phenomena. The cultural and scientific giants you allude to never considered themselves to be “Hungarian Jews,” or in any way seperate. Much like Catholic, Lutheran, atheist, agnostic or any other Hungarian, were simply Magyar. Similarly, the Danube Swabians (e.g. Puskas Ferenc) considered themselves to be simply Magyar.

Now whether their success can be alluded to some sort of Jewish genetics is another debate. But Hungary has always been genetically diverse because of its geographic location. Magyar people have always been bound by culture and soul, not by DNA.

The point I am trying to make is that historically there is only a Hungarian Jew in the same sence there is a Hungarian Catholic. Portraying Hungarian Jews as if they were some sort of minority, or even any different from other Hungarians, is wrong. The “Hungarian Jews” were 100% Magyar, in culture and soul. All Hungarians are genetically diverse, including the Jewish ones. The “Hungarian Jew” as understood today by certain segments of society in Hungary and abroad is something very recent, very new and a historical anomoly.

Carlyle,
I know a lot of Hungarian Jews who would disagree with you. How can you say that anti-Semitism in Hungary is recent, given the enthusiastic participation of Hungarian locals, e.g. the Arrow Cross party, in the murder of Jews during World War II? I am not blaming all Hungarians, to be sure, but that does not make the Arrow Cross any better.
Hungary’s most prominent Jews came from an Austro-Hungarian culture in which the German language was central. To reduce this to a Magyar culture is simply wrong.

I know you lot have a fetish for Jews and Germans. The famous Hungarians you mentioned were born and raised in Hungary and considered themselves 100% Magyar. They attended German universities because they were the best in the world at the time, but other than that it has nothing to do with some sort of Austro-German culture.

Jewish affinity and adulation for German culture (the very same,in which folkish rascism and a very murderous Variation of anti-Semitism developped)indeed seems unbroken. To me, this has a taste of “of course it CANT be the Magyar culture,because ect.” dismissing even the thought that Central and Eastern Europeans were/are as civilized as the rest of Europe. The more Im looking for prooves to the contrary the more I find that basically, my Thesis is right. As You seem to be Jewish/of Jewish background, may I recommend a very insightful book on this Topic to You? It called “Bieganski-” by V. Gosha and is dealing more or less about Central/Eastern European-Jewish relations.

How can you accuse me of ignoring Magyar culture after my panegyric to Hungarian gefilte fish? Stuffed carp with a sweet-and-sharp sauce is entirely Magyar. Nothing remotely like it exists in German cuisine, which for the most part is disgusting (although Rauecherforelle mit Meerrettichsahne is quite good, if not in the same league). The textures and flavors are unmistakably Magyar in their complexity and boldness.

Well, You proofed my point. If You are really interested in this topic-the book I recommended leaves no questions unanswered. BTW, What do you think about what Imre about Hungarians being genetically prone to being vile?

Please. Having been raised by a Hungarian Jewish stepmother (who was a young teenage Auschwitz survivor) from the age of 12, I grew up listening to her stories of Jewish life in Hungary. There were clear and distinct differences between Jews and other Hungarians. What is clear is that many Hungarian Jews changed their names in order to ‘pass’ as non-Jews, and many did. They did this because Hungarians often did make distinctions between Jews and ‘Magyars’.

Many did not whoever, and found themselves on the wrong side of the fence. Of her family, 7 of 12 did not survive the war, because they were considered different

Perhaps of far greater interest to this thread, I also grew up listening to my Bukoviner father discussing (arguing) with my Hungarian step as to how certain dishes were best cooked. Having compared the cooking of my Bukoviner grandmother to my Hungarian stepmother, it was clearly no contest.

My stepmother was and remains an outstanding cook. Hungarian Jewish stuffed cabbage (made with sauerkraut) is a standout ( I can only imagine how out of this world it would be eaten non-Jewish style, with sour cream), as are various braised dishes (especially veal), and of course chicken paprikas. The various noodle kugels savory ones made with cabbage and sweet ones made with poppy-seeds (must be ground) and other nuts, as well as the pastries . . . well well.

The Hungarian version of cholent is hands down the best, especially when made with goose fat, and paprika added to the flour kugel – potatoes, raisins (heaven forbid), and other fancies strictly verboten.

While not a fan of gefilte fish, the Hungarian version was light years ahead of the overly sweet and bland Polish and other Ashkenazic versions.

What else:

Hungarian women (including Jewish ones) are quite often beautiful.

I am astounded by the wealth of old world knowledge displayed by posters on this thread.

I can’t resist reprinting the canonical Jewish joke on the subject of assimilation by Hungarian Jews:

In the old days in Hungary, a talmudic scholar was riding home to his shtetl from Budapest. Opposite him sat a prosperous assimilated Jew, smoking a cigar. So why, thought the scholar, is such a man as this on his way to our shtetl? He’s too old to be married to Shprintzee’s Golda, and too wealthy to need to make a match with the widow Goldschuss. Nu, so is he coming to deal with Mottel Kohn’s bankruptcy? But Mottel Kohn’s too much of a schemer to deal with an outsider– this man must be family. So let’s see, he can’t be Mottel’s sister Soreh’s son, because she was only married twenty seven years ago, and he’s thirty five if he’s a day. Nu, so who could it be but his brother Beinish’s boy–yes, he was married about thirty-seven years ago. So he must be a lawyer, Dr Kohn. No, he’s never going be a successful lawyer in Budapest with such a Jewish name. So he must have changed it to Kovacs.. So he turns to the man and says, “Excuse me, Dr Kovacs, do you mind if I open the window?” “No,” replies the startled stranger, “but tell me, how did you know my name?” “Oh,” says our scholar, “it was obvious…”

As regards that Hungarian Jews are ‘flashy’, there is something to that.

Some of my parent’s Hungarian (Jewish) friends were flashier, more stylish dressers, the men going so far as to wear ‘foulards’ at times, which I believe most other Ashkenazic Jews would not be caught dead in. The women were more stylish too, no doubt showing off their more curvacious figures. I had a Hungarian great aunt who was the subject of many teenage fantasies (but I digress . . .)

My father often sniffed that they were living beyond their means, which may have been the case (this was in Montreal).

I forgot to mention that I met Edward Teller about 17 years ago in Montreal, where he had come to address the gathering of the Canadian Branch of the Israeli Tehiya Party, which was run in Israel by Schmuel Katz and Israeli atom expert and government minister Yu’val Ne’eman.

I mention it not to name drop, but to indicate that Teller considered himself Jewish first (and an obvious and ardent Zionist), and not Hungarian, as the poster up top suggests).

Thats great. Its very sad but,as well as Slavs, there does not seem to be much room left for the memory of murdered gypsies. The ones who most easily were caught by the Germans were btw those who had a permanent adress and were making a honest living. The very same people who could have become,had it not been for the Holocaust, positive examples and leaders of their community.

At Jewish Ideas Daily, Elliot Jager reports on an eruption of Hungarian nostalgia for the kind of wartime leaders that the rest of the world thinks of as war criminals, along with the resurgence of extremist nationalism and anti-Semitism.

Mr. Goldman, I do criticize it when people of questionable background are honored but

I would like to ask You to put things into perspective and to try to understand the position Central European-Eastern European nations are in.We were practically abandoned/sold to the Soviet Union, the “glorious” West did not really care about us,apart from inciting,f.e via Radio Free Europe, righteous rebellion against the SU and than just standing by and watching f.e the Hungarians getting slaughtered in 1956. After the collaps of the SU we became “free”,well, not really, virtually EVERYTHING was divided between the s.c “post-communists”-it is their children who have to money to be send to f.e Oxford,to get a head-start at life, not the children of the heros of Solidarity,Budapest 1956 and so on. Today,these people are looking down on us patriots, laughting right in our faces, advocating communism!!!, multi-culturalism, atheism,military weakness, destruction of military force,values ect. And I am saying this as a LEFT-LEANING person,thats how bad it is. So,as a Pole, I can kind of understand why Hungarians are looking into the past to find s.th they can look up to,dont get me wrong, what they see is not s.o who hated Jews, they see s.o who fought against the Soviet Union,for Hungarys freedom! As to the alleged “anti-Semitism”: seriously, is much,much better in Hungary,Poland,Slovakia ect. than f.e in GB,France,Sweden-its just, we are labeled as “anti-Semites” so whatever we do,it does not matter-thats probably how Jewish people must have felt once…..And I dont think I am an anti-Semite if I dont like people like Imre Kertesz who are saying rascist things (oh,wait, he is Jewish,so I guess its always ok-irony-)

“Hungarians are genetically subservient … They do not feel the slightest remorse for the gravest of historical crimes, they shift their responsibility to others and always put the blame on others … They are unable or unwilling to learn … they envy and, if possible, kill those who succeed in life through work, learning and innovation.”

Yes, Imre, if you call people that they will not like you,wether you are Jewish or not….

Anyhow, for the last 50 plus years,we were ruled by communists,and now, we are trying to be once again proud of our history. I agree, the gentlemen chosen to fulfill this role are…not really suited for it. I am just asking to understand our situation, a situation, in which we have to rebuild a broken,robbed,by communists socially-(dis)engineered society. So please,dont be gleefull that Hungary is seemingly disappearing,even suggesting it is a “punishment”-BTW, the Hungarians were NOT the nation that commited the Holocaust (the one who did seems to be well-liked by Jewish people—Irony anyone?), they did not really have much choice either,put the blame, where it rightfully belongs,thats all I am asking of You,thanks.

A big part of Europe’s problems arise from the “logic” exposed above. People oppressed by the degenerating Soviet system, whether directly or indirectly (in the Western part), look back to find their national pride.
That millions of lives were sacrificed for that pride is but an insignificant detail in the narrative. Oh, those glorious times, when “we” didn’t need to feel any shame!

Well, that’s a point this article makes: absent shame feelings indicate a tendency to avoid responsibility. And what’s more responsible than parenthood?

Look, obviously You dont get my point. I am as disgusted as You are when,in search of heros, people like These are honored. BUT plz, just try to understand why, instead of lecturing us,ok? Or demanding f.e repentence from f.e the whole Hungarian people for deeds commited by a rather small number of Nazi or Soviet collaborators who ALSO have a lot of non-Jewish blood on their hands.As I have said, we are on our route to rebuilding our Nation states, we dont need lecturing but help and constructive criticism.

I assume you are from the U.S? Must be really nice to never having have to fight against foreign occupants. Look, just try to understand our position,its not about, as you claim, us whining,but rather us being fed up to be treated like crap. Ill give you an example-as a Pole, I am really troubled by the fact that the Ukraine is using Bandera,a vile anti-Polish criminal, to somehow unite all Ukrainians under one logo. Its stupid, ist hurtful, an it does not work. Still, I understand the Motive behind it, Ill never call Ukrainians Pole-haters or stupid. There surely must be a better way to convince them to find another national hero. Lecturing s.o usually has the opposite effect,if anything.

Felek,
I appreciate your point. Americans have no sense of the tragedy of other peoples. The prospective disappearance of Hungary (among other Eastern European nations) is horrifying. My view, for what it’s worth, is that only a religious revival (rather than a nationalist revival) will save these countries from extinction. It is disheartening that John Paul II of blessed memory did not do more to revive religion in Poland.

I live in the USA. I am of European and Israeli parentage. I have lost relatives in both Europe and Israel. In Europe they were murdered for being Jews, and in Israel they died defending their nation, also because they were Jews. So I do have an understanding of these issues.

Being treated like crap does not give you license to vilify the Other to the point that the murder of innocents becomes acceptable. If your national survival requires that, better your nation die as far as I am concerned.
Mr. Goldman, while John Paul 2 may have been as close to a saint as we shall ever experience in our lives, the vast majority or religious leaders in Europe until very recently were certainly not only of no help to us, but if we go back just a little bit (in the case of French Catholic leadership, for example), they helped lay the foundation for conversion of anti-semitism from a religious prejudice to one based on immutable biology.

In many Orthodox Christian lands, the church still promulgates anti-Jewish themes. This is true still in some Greek Orthodox Churches in Canada, amazingly enough.

It may be that religious revival may be the key to saving Europe, but Jews have not been treated kindly when Europe was religion – based. It may be that now that they have Islam to compare with, there would be more tolerance for Jews, but Jews will always live on sufferance under the Church.

Remember that that is the near-ancient root of American Jewish Liberalism, its arm the ACLU; fear of religious coercion and incitement. Ridiculous now, perhaps, but not so ridiculous comparatively recently.

“An estimated 500,000 French men and women worked for the Resistance during Germany’s occupation of France. Resistance workers carried out thousands of acts of sabotage against the German occupiers. The risks were great. More than 90,000 resisters were killed, tortured or deported by the Germans.

They also gathered intelligence and helped Allied airmen and prisoners of war escape the country, risking their lives to save the young strangers”

Veld’hiv happened in summer 1942, after that the Clergy made it difficult for the Nazis and Vichy to deport Jews, except when repressions were launched after that german soldiers were killed by the resitance

“The report shows that German foreign ministry diplomats in Nazi-occupied Paris and throughout Europe played an active role in deciding whether Jews should be deported and sent to the gas chambers.

“If the French Resistance killed German soldiers, it was the diplomats who immediately deliberated whether to deport a thousand or 2,000 Jews to the extermination camps as a punishment,” Mr Conze said.” (a historian)

Veld’hiv happened in summer 1942, after that the Clergy made it difficult for the Nazis and Vichy to deport Jews, except when repressions were launched after that german soldiers were killed by the resitance

“The report shows that German foreign ministry diplomats in Nazi-occupied Paris and throughout Europe played an active role in deciding whether Jews should be deported and sent to the gas chambers.

“If the French Resistance killed German soldiers, it was the diplomats who immediately deliberated whether to deport a thousand or 2,000 Jews to the extermination camps as a punishment,” Mr Conze said.” (a historian)

France was one of the countries controlled by the Germans at the early stages of war, but it had a high level of democratic tradition of Liberte, Fraternity and Egalite. In France about 75000 Jews perished out of a population of 350,000, about 70% survived. Many factors contributed to the relatively high survival rate, the most important factor was the attitude of the silent majority, who made it difficult of the Germans to identify and catch the Jews. Even the local police cooperated only reluctantly with the Germans, Jews were provided with false identification papers, given shelter and moral support. Jews also participated massively in the resistance and at the beginning stages about 33% of the resistance fighters were Jewish.

See? According to the French crusader, French police arresting nearly 13,000 Jews (among which more than 4,000 children) only because they were Jewish, guarding them in a camp before transferring them to become smoke in the death camps, does not count.

What nation states? You’re in the EU, a supra-national socialist experiment.
The EU should help you (it lectures nicely), but nobody can learn in your place.
By claiming help and whining about lecturing, you don’t help yourself – which is the necessary condition for advance.

Shame and repentance are different things, and responsibility is yet another one.

It’s not a zero sum game, though from the way Europeans have treated Jews through the ages they seemed to think it was.

If you think it is necessary for Hungarians to display and act on anti-Semitism as one of their mechanisms of survival, or to brush it off as a minor foible of legitimate actions, you can’t really expect Goldman or anyone else of moral mindset to support that.

When the Jewish desire for survival impinges on the Hungarians, get back to us.

Excuse me: it is the Hungarians who begrudge themselves a chance to survive, by not bothering to have children. Why is that any fault of mine? If peoples wish to disappear, there is little one can do to prevent their disappearance. My thesis in “How Civilizations Die” comes down to just that. Civilizations disappear because they want to.

The archeological and other evidence suggests the Philistines were a non-Semitic people from Europe (if you doubt there has been some European blood introduced into Syro-Phoenicia prior to the British/French mandates in the Middle East, just look at the very Irish-looking red heads in the Assad government). The other major source of European and Slavic stock in the Middle East comes from the Turkish mixing with the Byzantine Christians they conquered in the mid-15th century when Constantinople was Occupied (end the occupation remains my slogan more than 500 years later As documented in this film (by a priest rumored to be Putin’s confessor, no less):

Byzantium had emperors and elites who spoke Greek as their common language but regularly intermarried with Arabs, Macedonians, Bulgars, Russian/Kievan and other South Slavs/Serbs (hence the Third Rome legend in Russia).

Some of the Philistines iron age technology was similar to that of the Myceneans.

I believe the European/Byzantine stock influence accounts for Lebanese women being some of the most beautiful in the Arab-speaking world with their green eyes, even if they tend towards shorter more full-figured Arab body shapes.

Sorry, Markus, took a while for the Groeschen to drop — the statues of Horthy going up in Hungarian villages actually are fertility totems that will make Hungarians have more children! In that case, build all the statues of Horthy you want.

Can anyone explain why and how come Hungarian authorities never bothered to investigate Laszlo Csatary, suspected of helping organize the deportation of thousands of Jews from what is now eastern Slovakia to the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, who was living in Budapest ?

Hungary is also an ulterior source for one of Groucho Marx’s most famous lines, the one about not wanting to join any club that would accept his membership. The mother of that charming Stalinist thug, Egon Kisch, railed at a hungover young Egon one morning for spending all night playing poker with the sort of people who would play poker with him. I don’t know about Groucho, but Ms Kisch sure got it right.

Hello,
I am from Hungary so I see this issue from close. This is how I see it:
The people here are demanding in terms they do not want to raise children in financial insecurity. They want to live a quality life and want to be able to give everything to their children, feed them, and later sending them to college or university. Buying a house suitable for a bigger family is a luxury. People make plans, calculate and conclude they have to choose between buying a house (and paying its loan for decades taking 30-50% of their salary) or having children. If they have children they also need to maintain a bigger car, and people want to travel on vacations every year. From these points of view people find that having 2-3 children and raising them for more than than 20 years in a quality life is not possible from the average income in the last a few decades. People who have to work more for their living have less resources for children, obviously. An example for comparing is that in many families in western countries it is common to employ au pairs to take care of their children while the parents are at work, but for example Hungarian parents cannot afford that. This is just one drawback of the few resources, among many others.
This is why the birth rates are low, there is nothing to do with anti-semitism, neo-nazis or pre-WW2 politics. (How dumb idea it is!)
However there are two goups of people with more than than 3 children in average: the gypsies that was mentioned above by someone, because they do not feel the responsibility. They just bear them without thinking of the future and that level of life is enough for them. For sure, their children will not be able to join the higher education. The other group is the wealthy people, usually entrepreneurs, they can afford to raise several children. Unfortunetaly a necessary condition to become wealthy is not paying the taxes, due to the extremely high tax rates. The tax rates are high because there are many civil servants, unemployed and retired people payed from the state budget. The mindset that government should take care of the people is inherited from socialist era, and it changes quite slowly. So average people cannot become wealthy enough for raising several children, if they pay their taxes. This is like in Catch-22. Around 70% of all legal earnings are taken and redistributed by the government, that is a huge number (including income tax, social contributions, vat, etc.). People are not free when more than half of their earnings is taken.
This is an issue that the current government is trying to solve with not much success until today. It is a slow process, needs increasing economy and more private jobs. On the other hand this would require lower taxes, otherwise wealthy people do not invest in the economy and industry, and average people cannot spare enough money for starting a business. Of course, the government cannot reduce the taxes from one day to the other, because many people would loose their income from the government and starve to death. This is not an option. The narrow balance needs to be found, that takes time to go on.
Previous governments since 1990, did not realize these problems, they just increased the taxes continually, took the money from the working people and gave it to the “poor” in the name of solidarity, without any strategic thinking. But in developed countries targeted social support is necessary for higher birth rates: it does not mean giving more money, just to leave their earnings at the people who work AND raise children in the same time. This is what our government has started in the last 2 years, but the steps are very small yet.
About muslim and african immigrants I think the eastern EU countries do not want to go on the way that western countries did in the last decades. Most western countries required cheap workers for lower qualified jobs that their citizens did not want to do any more, so they accepted immigrants from their old colonies. But in many cases the immigrants cannot be integrated in the society. We can see now it contributes to the decline of the old european culture of christian origins, although in long term this process may help to strenghten and arise again when it finds its way among the competing cultures. But now in then western countries the birth rates of the native citizens are also much less than the immigrants. Remember the 2005-2006 violent riots in France, I lived in Paris that time. We do not want to see that in eastern countries, we have enough problem with the uneducated gypsy people. However in Paris I had higher educated muslim colleagues, I never saw any gypsy at that level.

David P. Goldman,
You have written a good article. The lengthy comments hide a wealth of information, too.
Your report on fishing in the Danube would warm the hearts of all Hungarians.
In general, it would be great to approach Hungary with some love, because the majority deserves our empathy.
It is hard to understand their problems. Let us refrain from being over-angry with them.
Thanks,
Steven